New Year's Eve 🍾and when we should be celebrating "2025" 🥳 coming in, my husband, Vel and I are in the hospital praying for answers. It all started on December 28th. Vel was on vacation that week, but it was a staycation at home. I noticed was sleeping a lot, lethargic and he had a low-grade fever He said, "his stomach was hurting on his right side!" I immediately thought it was his gallbladder (I had mines taken out in 2009). I told him, you have some kind of infection and need to get to the hospital.
Well, good thing I am a medical fanatic, read a lot and I followed my instincts... It turned out that it was his appendix, and it needed to come out. They did two CT scans. The second one, was slightly more visible, so they saw there was an abscess on the appendix. An abscess is a tender mass/sac filled with puss caused by an infection. It is very dangerous and life threatening if you don't get the infection under control before it spreads to other organs and through your blood stream.
How Do You Remove an Appendix?
So now there's another issue... There are two ways to remove an appendix (appendectomy). The first option is the surgeon uses a CT scan to help guide them through small incisions to remove the appendix, which is the least invasive and quicker recovery (1-3 weeks) and the procedure takes 1 hour. For the second option, the surgeon would completely open you up and remove the infected appendix. This procedure will make you more susceptible to further infection, bleeding, complications, bloating and excess gas. The surgery also takes several hours, you will have a much bigger scar and it is double the recovery time 6 - 8 weeks.
Coming Up with A Game Plan! 🤔
The surgeons and other specialist were baffled on how to handle this. The CT scan wasn't clear enough to guide them laparoscopically (non-invasively) and with Vel having the infection it was too dangerous to operate knowing it could spread throughout his colon. It was too risky and as the surgeon explained all of this to us, he said, "If the infection spreads to his colon or there are signs of a tumor or lesion(s), we were looking at a whole different, serious surgery to remove part of the colon, then they would have to get a biopsy and test it for cancer." CANCER??? 😱
So, with all of this looming and no clear plan of attack, all we could do is pray and trust that God would guide the surgeons and other staff to make the best decisions. So, they decided to attack the infection first with strong antibiotics while Vel was in the hospital.
The surgeon felt that Vel needed to be on antibiotics longer (another 10 days) and didn't want him running up his hospital bill, so he discharged Vel to complete the antibiotics at home and educated me on what to look for to bring him back in, in case of emergency. We were a little apprehensive as anything could happen at home, but after 3 days on the antibiotics, his fever finally broke and he said the pain was barely there anymore. So that meant the antibiotics was doing its job to clear up the infection. Whew!!! 😰We were so happy! So now we just needed him to finish the antibiotics and wait until his appointment on Jan 14th.
January 14th Appt: 👨🏽⚕️
Vel was nervous going in to see the doctor (understandably so). He was contemplating in his head, what could still be going on and grappling with outcomes. I just kept trying to simplify it for him and say, "first clear up the infection and then we will see what's next!" I did so, so he wouldn't continue to worry about it, because ultimately the outcome is in God's hands!
At the appointment, the doc asked him how he was feeling. Vel let him know, that the fever was gone and that the pain was gone. So, the doctor felt comfortable moving on to the next step, which was getting him authorized for surgery through our insurance (BCBS) for an appendectomy. He explained, they would go in laparoscopically and if they see any signs of a tumor or lesion from the mucosal of the colon and/or intestines, they will switch and do the Endoscopic mucosal resection (remove part of his intestines) and get a biopsy. So now all we could do is wait for a surgery date and pray. Here is an article and video further explaining an endoscopic mucosal resection. Endoscopic mucosal resection - Mayo Clinic
Scheduled Surgery Date: 📅
Vel's surgery date changed several times. We were told by the surgeon to go through the emergency room, after he said he couldn't get in touch with BC to get the authorization. He said, "the ER would take care of the pre-authorization process before admitting him." The ER didn't understand why the surgeon did that and dragged them into this chaos. We discovered the reason hours later. The surgeon didn't want to sit on the phone with BCBS for an hour-and-a- half to get the authorization, so he tried to shuck his responsibility and put it on the ER. Well, this just caused so much more stress, confusion and unnecessary chaos.
After waiting all day, the ER was not able to secure the authorization in time and so they had to release him. The next day, Vel was on the phone most of the day trying to get BCBS to speak to admitting, the surgeon and powers to be and clear this mess up. These were one of those times, you just have to do things yourself to get-r-done!!! It turned out, the improper procedure was on the surgeon. He was supposed to call BCBS get authorization first, give the authorization codes to admitting so they could get Vel on the schedule for surgery. So that day, thanks be to God and to Vel remaining vigilant, he was able to get a scheduled surgery date for the next day.
It's Surgery Day! 😷
Finally... it was surgery day! We arrived at the hospital around 8:20 am. Vel's surgery was scheduled for 10:30 am. on January 29th. Everything went smoothly. We met in registration to pay our portion we owed (deductible $750 plus 20% copay = $2144.37 (thank God we have a fully funded Flexible Spending Account (FSA). We then went to the outpatient surgery area and waited until they checked Vel in. Once they put him in the surgery waiting area, they did pre-surgery testing (EKG, Bloodwork, Chest Xray etc...). I was able to stay with him until he was ready for surgery.
White Vel was being prepared for surgery, I waited in the cafeteria (3 hrs.) . The surgery only took 1 hr., and 15 min. After surgery and moved him to a holding area. I received several phone calls from the team.
The first call was from the surgeon letting me know Vel was doing, and he gave me a quick update about the surgery. "The surgeon did not see a tumor on Vel's Colon or intestines. They did remove his appendix and a small lesion on his outer colon. But everything looked good. Praise God!!! 🤲🏽
The next phone call was letting me know they were waiting on a spot to open up in recovery before I could see Vel.
The third call was to let me know that I could come back to the outpatient area to see Vel and boy... was that a great feeling knowing he made it out of surgery and his recovery would be shorter with them doing the laparoscopic surgery instead of opening him up! God was merciful!
