Apendicitis @ FL250

I recently read a blog about an F/O who had bad shits after eating his crew meal and nearly incapacitated him. This reminded me of an experience I once had on a trip to Seattle while flying a King Air.

We had a proposed wheels up time of noon. I got to the airport around 1030 to preflight. Around 1115, by some miraculous fuck up on dispatches part, we were now pushed back to a 1430 departure. Fine with me! I love Seattle and since my duty time started at 1100, this now meant that we would be overnighting there. In the meantime, I asked the crew if they'd like to go have lunch. They all agreed and I drove us to a great burger joint around the corner from the airport. I ordered a guacamole burger medium rare... A big mistake, I thought. The conversation was good as I hadn't seen either of the medical crew, Patty and Cindy, in a while. Tim was my co-pilot. Tim didn't smoke, drink or cuss and was a Mormon, so naturally, I didn't trust him. But he was easy enough to get along with and laughed at my jokes, no matter how dirty they were, so I liked him and he was a halfway decent pilot.

The patient arrived and we departed shortly before 1500. We touched down in Reno about 2 hours later for fuel. The patient was ambulatory and disembarked the plane to use the bathroom. Today's patient was an elderly gentleman who had atrial fibrillation and needed medical escort to get home as he needed oxygen and wasn't permitted to fly on the airlines.
I chose Reno as my fuel stop based on past experience. The delectable young lady behind the counter at Jet West and I have history. I won't mention her name but she, and maybe several of you, know who she is. It was great to see her and in retrospect I'm sorry I didn't try and make it back to Reno to overnight. She was a very sweet girl. The old man returned back from the bathroom and we were soon airborne.

Thirty minutes out of Reno it hit me. It came on slow like bad gas that just builds. Soon it turned into cramping of my lower abdomen. What the hell is going on, I thought. Eventually, my discomfort was noticeable to my F/O, as much as I tried to hide it. Tim wasn't actually checked out in the aircraft and legally speaking, was just along for the ride. I didn't want to put him through the undue stress of having to handle the arrival, approach in IMC and landing if I didn't have to. At this point it felt like a tremendous hunger pain. Something I've never felt before in my life. I did the math and it had been almost exactly 8 hours since I had eaten that medium-rare burger, god dammit.

My stomach pain stabilized. This is to say that it didn't get any better or worse, but I was still concerned. Apart from a little heartburn every now and then, I've always had an iron stomach. We set up for the ILS to 13R at Boeing, broke out at 500 feet and touched down without further incident. I didn't let the crew know what was going on until they had put the patient in the ambulance. I was certain I had food poisoning. Our nurse gave me a Zofran, an anti-nausea medication and we got in the rental car and headed for the hotel. I checked in and went straight to my room while the crew went to the adjacent restaurant. I had no idea the night I was in for.

I opened the door to my room and projectile vomited my way to the bathroom. I would have this back and forth routine between the bed and bathroom about a dozen more times throughout the night. It reached the point of dry heaving. I called my flight nurse about 0500 and gave her an update. She came right down with another Zofran, which I promptly threw up. She was great. Kept cold compresses on my head while I struggled to find a comfortable position between fetal, on my back, on my side, on my stomach, on my head, Fuck, anything that would give me temporary relief from the pain I was experiencing. I finally was able to go to sleep around 0600 for a couple of hours.

We met in the lobby at 1100 and my stomach was still wrenching. My pain had become more centralized in my lower right abdomen and I was in obvious pain, as much as I tried to hide it. I was ready to go home. When I showed up, my whole crew commented on how shitty I looked. I told them that we should go to the airport and play it by ear. My flight nurse suggested she hook me up to an IV to restore some fluids and we would wait and see. After 2 liters of saline, my condition hadn't changed. Nurse Cindy called our medical director, a very well respected trauma surgeon and she said since my condition hadn't improved that I needed to go to the ER.

I showed up to the ER with the IV still stuck in my arm. I was quickly moved to the front of the line. Evidently, when you've got tubes and shit hanging out of you, they hustle you through. You learn something new every day. I was put in an examination room were a nurse came in and asked me every god damn question known to man. What's your name? birth date? social security number? Mother's maiden name? When was the last time you wet the bed? Fuck I don't know... Give me some shit to make me feel better. Fine, go pee in a cup.

20 minutes later, a very nice, compassionate doctor came in and gave me the once over. He told me they were a teaching hospital and asked if I would mind having some medical students sit in on the exams, etc. "Sure," I said, "why not?" Well shit, this was a big fucking mistake. For the next 2 hours I had every student in the God damn place asking me the same questions over and over again and poking my very tender abdomen. After the third one came in, a Russian kid, I said "God damn it, just cheat off of the last guy that was in here." He didn't laugh. My flight nurse who stayed faithfully by my side the whole time, laughed her ass off... Poor bastard.

Soon, the attending came in and said my piss tests came back and I had appendicitis. "Well shit, bring on the morphine then," I said. He smiled and nodded. He said he had good news and bad news and asked me which one I wanted first. I've never known how to properly answer this question but I figured what the hell, tell me the good news. The good news was that I would receive the surgery laproscopically, leaving a smaller scar, and the bad news was that the chief attendant would be doing the surgery. This was actually good news, the doc was just fucking with me. He told me a nurse would be in shortly to take me to pre-op. "Great! How 'bout some more morphine, doc?" Granted.

So far, everyone had been really cool, until I got to pre-op. This lady was a bitch. But, she was old and fat, so she obviously was manifesting her hatred for herself onto me, I decided. She said she had heard about me. What the hell does that mean? I thought. My reputation preceded me, I guessed. She became increasingly rude and I hadn't even done anything to her yet. Her rants continued until I asked her if she knew what a treadmill was. We both shut up and not another word was spoken by either of us. Soon the anesthesiologist came in. She was a very nice Russian woman (another Russian? What was it with this place?) and told me what would happen on her end. I didn't care. Let's get the shit over with, I thought. She gave me a shot and said she'd see me after the surgery. This is about the last thing I remember.

I woke up to a doctor shining a flashlight in my eye. "Alright, doc, I'm ready. Let's do this." "It's done," he said. Weird, I thought. "Let me see it. I want to see it." "See what?" the doc said. My appendix, I want to see it." I guess he didn't get this request very often but nonetheless, he brought it over. It looked like a large piece of fat cut from a prime rib. It was white and stretched. "Hours from rupturing," the doc said. They wouldn't let me keep it. I was moved to a room and was well taken care of for the next 30 hours. The pain was relentless, even with the drugs.

I checked out of the hospital 36 hours after entering and Cindy filled my prescription on the way out. 20 Percocet and something to inhibit infection. Patty and Tim caught a commercial flight home the day before as Tim has kids and Patty needed to get back for some other reason. My chief pilot would be commercialing in himself to fly me home. I'll never hear the end of this, I thought. I'm about to be a patient in my own plane. He met us at BFI and we were soon airborne for the 4 hour flight home.

My chief pilot drove my car to my house and caught a cab from there. What a great guy. He never had a word on condescension. A couple of joking prods was about it. My only concern was the percocet. I wondered how long I would be grounded from taking it. The next day I called Oklahoma City and got a very sweet, hot sounding Sooner on the phone. I told her the situation and she said she would look it up for me and asked me to hold. After a long hold she finally came back and said, "now what was the name of the drug?" "Percocet," I said. She had me spell it. "Ummm... 6 months." "6 months, what," I said. "6 months you have to be off of it before you can return to flight." "Oh, thank God," I said. "What, you haven't taken any yet," she asked. "No, I'm just glad I didn't tell you my name." Click!