My wife went to bed early one night, not feeling good. Next day sang as a choral section leader, made a quick appearance at a kid’s birthday party to drop off our gift, then spent the rest of the day in bed. Very weird for her. Kept telling me she was ok and just needed to rest. The next morning I woke up, took one look at her and told her we were going to the emergency room. Pale and just… I could tell something was wrong.

By the end of the day she had her appendix out.

I was worried because surgery took almost three times as long as anticipated. The surgeon that talked to me post-op was super excited about how her body prevented it from rupturing by everything around the appendix swelling up and effectively giving it no room to do so. The surgery had taken so long because they carefully had to move everything out of the way before removing the appendix, then when they saw the state of it they decided to do their full “clean sweep” they would do for a ruptured one just to be safe (and confirmed no leakage/rupture), then move things back. I told him that she had started feeling bad nearly a day and a half before she felt bad enough to come in, and we joked about her pain tolerance. I could tell that surgeon just did what would probably be his favorite surgery that year, he was so excited about it.

I had known my wife had a high pain tolerance, but that hammered home just how seriously I need to take when she doesn’t feel good, lol.