A Horrible, Terrible, No-good Gut Feeling

A cold dagger stabbed into the stomach a thousand times would be comparable to the sharp pain that dwelled in my stomach. The pain crawled into every muscle fiber of my stomach; it kept growing day by day. I presumed that my condition was just a regular stomach ache, but little did I know my journey from here was going to impact my life in a way I never could have envisioned. I begged my parents to take me to the pediatrician for days, however, they believed that feeding me the grape-flavored, foul-tasting goo, also known as Tylenol, would help my stomach ache dissipate. Temporarily, my stomach would feel like cloud nine but the ice-cold pain would return shortly, causing my eyebrows to wince and fingers to clench for the thousandth time in a day. Finally, after a week of bearing the excruciating pain, I convinced my parents to have a doctor examine me at a clinic. The pediatrician used her cold, brittle fingers to dab my stomach in different places. While her fingers felt gentle, the touch of fingers on my stomach gave me collywobbles. After some time, she hypothesized that there was a high chance that I had appendicitis and may need to undergo surgery. My heart just jumped up into my throat as my heartbeat rapidly increased. Words started to echo and my sense of balance evaporated, causing me to fall into my chair with my eyes wide in shock.

“You should get her x-rays done just so we can confirm that it isn’t anything serious,” the doctor explained.

My parents and I quickly drove to a radiologist across town and got my x-rays done. At this point, the world wouldn’t stop spinning and my leg unconsciously was shaking to ease the anxiety. A wave of emotions overcame me; I just wanted none of this to have never happened to me. The radiologist stared at the x-rays for hours before feeding me that disgusting goo again and whispering something to my parents. The nerves began to creep again as my parents looked a little green in the face. Once again, we scurried through the town and reached Robert Wood Johnson, the hospital where they admitted me. A plethora of disgusting smells from disinfectant to waste triggered a multitude of negative emotions and fear in me. The nurturing nurses placed me on an uncomfortably plump bed with white pillows that smelled like bleach. I didn’t have my own room yet, instead, there were just coarse, teal curtains surrounding me to provide me with “privacy”. The hospital had patients and professional workers bustling around with occupancy, so we had to wait more than three hours for the doctor and nurses to attend to me. The whole situation that had transpired felt extremely unrealistic and my body couldn’t find the courage to stop trembling. The nurses finally stopped at my cubicle with a tall, funny-looking metal machine with a pouch attached to it.

“Now before you freak out, this is an IV. For the next 24 hours, you can’t eat or drink water. This machine will give you all the supplements you need, so most likely you won’t feel as hungry. The IV is a needle, but don’t worry, it will only feel like a pinch,” one of the nurses calmly explained.

I had to brace myself for the syringe since the IV needle was a lot bigger than a butterfly needle. I felt the cool swipe of the antiseptic swab on my skin. The thin, yet long needle submerged into my skin as I was pinching myself with my other hand. While it didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to, the sweat forming on the surface of my skin was trickling down the arch of my back. A tiny tear had formed at the corner of my eyes as they began to swell from all of the emotions that had clung on to me since morning. The small hand on the clock in my room ran through the numbers 2 to 8 in the blink of an eye. I just lay there as the sound of squeaky wheelchairs and the scream of other children redundantly played in my head. Soon enough, a nurse steered me to another room with a menacingly large machine encompassing a computer on the top of the apparatus.

"Just relax. I am going to put this cool jelly-like substance on your stomach so I can see what's going on inside of you," she chuckled.

I sat there relaxed as I stared at the monotonous ceiling with some paint chipping off the edges. I could feel her using the smooth, plastic machine to slather the jelly all over my navel region. For the first time in a while, I didn’t wince or cry or feel like I was suffering. But it all came back after the nurse spoke again.

“You have a severely swollen appendix and if you don’t get surgery as soon as possible, you may die,” the nurse sadly confessed.

I remember gasping so hard that it felt like someone was strangling me. It took me a good ten minutes to wrap my head around the situation and my luck. The nurses and my parents led me to my room, neither of them uttering a word to each other. My actual room looked completely different since it actually had walls, and there was a small little corner by the window for my father to sleep overnight.

"The doctor will be with you guys soon," the nurse muttered.

Five minutes after, a tall physician with heavy footsteps walked in with a stethoscope around his neck.

"Hello, parents and Aarohi. As you know, Aarohi has appendicitis. The surgeon can't come to the hospital right now to perform the surgery, however, first thing tomorrow morning, we will have her come in. For now, don't worry about it and just get some rest," the doctor explained with a confident voice.

That night, my eyes turned redder than ever and my eyelids refused to shut down. I was so apprehensive about the surgery tomorrow that the bland walls and tableful of torn magazines suddenly looked more appealing than they had ever been. The metal tang from stainless steel and the smell of a pine cleaner settled in the air the whole night. Similarly, every hour, a nurse would come to check on me by taking my vitals. The dim light from the small space between the oak door and the floor crept under my bed. Throughout the night I could hear the low voices of the nurses, the clacking of the keyboard, and the boisterous air conditioner. The next morning, I felt something that I had never felt before in my life. I was lost in my own train of thought as the nurses sanitized my whole body and took me to a small, quiet room where a confident nurse spoke to me before giving me the anesthesia.

"Don't worry about anything. Anesthesia will make you fall asleep in ten seconds. I promise that I will be right next to you the whole time," the nurse soothingly promised.

At that moment the eyelids that had fought so hard to remain open gave in to the transparent serum injected in my body. After the surgery, the pain was so severe that I could feel a sudden gush of energy filling up my whole body all the way to my fingertips. I couldn't help but kick and yell at the top of my lungs, so they had to put me back to sleep. Once I woke up, my head was spinning and I clutched at my navel region as if to ease the surging paint. The jolt of energy that filled my body a couple of hours ago had disappeared but I felt extremely numb as if my body were giving up on me.

"I can't believe I just went through a whole surgery," I thought to myself before passing out again.

For the next couple of days, I learned how to slowly walk again without hunching my back continuously by using the cold, metal rails against the yellow walls. Every morning, the smell of burnt coffee from machines mixed with antiseptics seemingly reduced as I became accustomed to living in the hospital. The nurses would bring me bland hospital meals in a blue, plastic tray but merely dust would accumulate on the untouched trays. As I would waddle around in circles on my floor level, I would observe the other children who had more than two machines attached to them. They knew their way around the hospital and all the nurses very well, allowing me to deduce that they were regular patients in this hospital who had lived here for weeks.

" Excuse me? How long have these children been in this hospital?" I asked one of the nurses who were in the playroom.

"These children have been our patients for months now, and some of them have even completed a year," she replied.

I stood there in awe because I was only supposed to be in the hospital for a week, however, some of these children have been here for months. I couldn't even imagine the lives of these children since they had to stay inside a room with the same dull walls and the same bland food every single day. All of the painful emotions and anxiety I had felt since going to my pediatrician paled in comparison to the dreadfulness the other kids must have gone through. At that moment, I learned something that not many eleven-year-olds learn; you may be facing struggles, but in the real world, there are other people who go through so many more things while keeping a smile on their face. For the first time in days, all 28 of my teeth shined in the warmth of the afternoon as the corners of my mouth lifted proudly. Today was a good day.