Notes from the Appendix

My appendectomy is just one more example of the cavalier treatment Fate accords me.  Certainly I'm going to tell you about my operation.  Don't cringe‑-no home movies go with it.  And besides, this story has everything‑-mystic overtones, drama, the revelation of eternal truths, and, even more important, a Snow White ending.  Considering the state of today's literature, can you afford to pass up such a bargain?

Take the mystic fatalism involved.  Because my mother had died after an appendectomy, my grandmother was convinced I would develop appendicitis also.  She even knew, years before it occurred, what month it would strike.  It would hit in August, just as it had with my mother.  Consider what Poe could've done with the atmosphere at my home the August grandma discovered I wouldn't straighten my right leg.  He could've based a whole novel on it: The Tell-Tale Start, or The Raving.

Then there is mystery as the plot sickens.  I was dragged to a doctor.  This wasn't for determining my ailment‑-grandma already knew what was wrong.  She just wanted her diagnosis confirmed.  In his office the physician and I took up a strange litany.  He'd ask if the right side of my abdomen hurt, and I'd respond that it didn't, it just felt pulled too tight.  Then he'd move his hands to probe the mystery, and I'd push them away with a commanding "No!"  Round we'd go again.

After fifteen minutes of this rite, the poor man was as confounded as I.  But not that medical marvel, my grandmother.  With a flourish of logic worthy of Hercule Poirot she demanded, "So she has no pain, so what?  So she has appendicitis anyway, and take her to the hospital."  With loud protestations (mine‑-the good doctor knew better than to argue with my grandmother), I was delivered to The Woman in White.  Under her ministrations I finally felt pain.  Not in my abdomen, no.  In my finger, which she had punctured for a blood sample.

Now the suspense‑-you're feeling it, aren't you‑-heightens as we approach the climax.  I lay, finger throbbing, a nameless fluid dripping into my vein.  Accompanying the fluid was a stream of air bubbles.  The word "embolism" shot through my mind.  This was followed by the phrase "mercy killing."  But the air bubbles never had a chance.  They'd reckoned without my white blood cells which rose stalwartly to my defense.  Indeed, they rose in such great numbers that an emergency was declared.  Less than forty-five minutes from my passage into the hospital, I was passing out, strapped to an operating table.  But let's leave the damsel in distress until later.  For meanwhile, back at the waiting room, our real heroine is heading Nemesis off at the pass.

What Greek tragedies churned through her mind as she waited those thirty minutes for news?  What offering did Grandma Agonistes make on my behalf?  Did she, like Alcestis, demand to sacrifice her life for mine?  All that's certain is that she didn't collapse until the doctor came.

He reassured her I was fine.  "Ronnie had peritonitis, the result of a split appendix," he told her.  "If it weren't for you, she'd have been dead in two weeks."  Somehow Grandma the Suppliant had rescued Iphigenia‑-and in the nick of time.

Not that Iphigenia‑-me‑-was particularly happy to be alive.  Not once the anesthetic wore off.  I felt drained, in more ways than one.  But it was in those days of recuperation that two great wisdoms were revealed to me.  The first is a Mystery never disclosed to the uninitiated: no matter how bad you feel before an operation, you'll feel worse after.  Much, much worse.  And the second is an Eternal Truth too often scorned: it does, it really does, hurt more when you laugh.

Sit still.  I'm not through yet.  Down the hall conflict and irony lurk.  Also Ellen, another eighteen-year-old recovering from an appendectomy, and mistakenly convinced she has suffered more than I. 

On my side I had the suddenness of the attack, the dangers of peritonitis, and the sadistic drain.  But Ellen had had ether.  This was a horror I'd been spared, and my foil seized her advantage.

Leaning back on her bed, Ellen proceeded to enact the devastating emotions she had faced.  Stretched flat, hands crossed over her bosom, Ellen intoned sepulchrally, "Even with the pain, I'm afraid, afraid of the ether cone.  It's coming closer and closer, and I shut my eyes."  In demonstration Ellen shut her eyes. 

As she did so a starched, white uniform came upon the scene.  "This is it," Ellen went on, "really it."  An appalled look came over the figure in the doorway.  From the bed Ellen was continuing, eyes still closed.  "...This is it; I'm going under, I'm going.  This is the end."  If the nurse had been horrified before, she was aghast now.  I, on the other hand, was giggling, and this in turn made me moan.

Now the nurse turned her stricken face to me.  All hope of self control vanished, and I succeeded in laughing and crying simultaneously.  For a moment the nurse looked as if she too would go hysterical.  Then she turned and fled down the corridor.  How long it took her to return with help, I can't say.  As fast as I could hobble, I headed for my own bed.  I had the uneasy feeling that I'd be questioned, and I was unwilling to give the answers.  I laugh too easily.

You've been waiting‑-I can tell‑-for the conclusion, that romantic ending I promised.  Don't rush me.

Back home the strictures of convalescence palled quickly.  Within a week I was begging to go to the movies.  So were five other people‑-we were planning to triple date.  Before granting her blessing on the venture, and in a voice Moses would have envied, grandma recited the commandments: I was not to stand.  I was not to let myself be jostled.  I was not to use up my energy.  And above all, I was not to walk stairs.  In grim conclusion she gave the ultimate invocation: The Doctor Said.

We pledged our pious devotion to the doctor, swore to uphold his laws, and left with many amens.  It was not until after we purchased the tickets that we made our discovery.  The doctor's commandments were no easier to follow than the ones from Mount Sinai.  Smoking, and all six of us smoked, was permitted in the balcony only.

None of us wanted to face a double feature without nicotine, none of us wanted to separate from the group, and none of us wanted to find out what would happen if I walked up two flights of stairs.  Marty, my date, solved the problem.  With one arm under my knees and the other around my waist, he led the procession upward. 

I should've been ecstatic at the romance of it all.  Unfortunately, though I was fond of Marty, I was much more interested in somebody else.  So while my date, who had a crush on me, was in seventh heaven, I remained quite down to earth‑-at least on its balcony level.  Yet I can't say my point of view wasn't changed.  For I knew now how Snow White would've felt if, after the prince's kiss, she had ridden off with one of the dwarfs.

But romance isn't the only reward in this world.  It also pays to have an appendix removed.  It pays your doctor (a hefty sum), it pays the hospital (each ward rents as a penthouse suite), it paid grandma (I was safe from appendicitis at last), and it paid Marty (carrying one hundred and twelve pounds up two flights is happiness?)  And yes, it even paid me.  For it proved, once and for all, I had guts.

Oh.  You'd noticed that already.