Hi everyone,
I recently had my appendix out. It was really difficult to diagnose as I didn't display all the normal symptoms eg. fever and vomiting, and whilst I did have pain in the lower right hand side of the abdomen, it wasn't 'severe enough' to be appendicitis. 🙄
I finally got admitted to hospital basically because I had ketones and was really dehydrated, but even the doctors there said on numerous occasions that it was an 'unconvincing' case for appendicitis. However my blood tests did show a hight white blood cell count - ie that there was some sort of infection going on.
When I was finally examined by the surgeons they still weren't convinced of apendicitis, but decided to do a laparoscopy to investigate. 'If it's inflamed, we'll take it out,' they said. Flash-forward a few hours and I'm waking up from surgery to be told that the appendix had been severely inflamed and stuck to my bowel. Fortunately they were able to remove it without having to remove any of the bowel.
Anyway, I later remembered my GP telling me that people with diabetes sometimes present with less severe symptoms with appendicitis. It certainly seems that that was the case with me. According to my surgeon it was the biggest (ie worst inflamed) appendix he'd ever removed (not that I'm bragging)
and it just strikes me as odd that I wasn't in more pain! I mean, I was in a lot of discomfort, but not agony.
I'm just curious to see if anyone else had a similar experience with not having typical symptoms for appendicitis? And also wanted to generally remind people to be suspicious of pain in the lower right-hand abdomen and to insist on being examined thoroughly!
I recently had my appendix out. It was really difficult to diagnose as I didn't display all the normal symptoms eg. fever and vomiting, and whilst I did have pain in the lower right hand side of the abdomen, it wasn't 'severe enough' to be appendicitis. 🙄
I finally got admitted to hospital basically because I had ketones and was really dehydrated, but even the doctors there said on numerous occasions that it was an 'unconvincing' case for appendicitis. However my blood tests did show a hight white blood cell count - ie that there was some sort of infection going on.
When I was finally examined by the surgeons they still weren't convinced of apendicitis, but decided to do a laparoscopy to investigate. 'If it's inflamed, we'll take it out,' they said. Flash-forward a few hours and I'm waking up from surgery to be told that the appendix had been severely inflamed and stuck to my bowel. Fortunately they were able to remove it without having to remove any of the bowel.
Anyway, I later remembered my GP telling me that people with diabetes sometimes present with less severe symptoms with appendicitis. It certainly seems that that was the case with me. According to my surgeon it was the biggest (ie worst inflamed) appendix he'd ever removed (not that I'm bragging)
and it just strikes me as odd that I wasn't in more pain! I mean, I was in a lot of discomfort, but not agony.I'm just curious to see if anyone else had a similar experience with not having typical symptoms for appendicitis? And also wanted to generally remind people to be suspicious of pain in the lower right-hand abdomen and to insist on being examined thoroughly!
