I missed the Sunday update for last week, but for good reason. I was recovering from having my appendix out.

So, what happened? As far as I can tell, I had a textbook case. My lower stomach and side hurt. Pain came and went. Went to the doctor, and she said I should ease up on the exercise and eat that yogurt that has the stuff in it.

For a while, everything was fine.

A few weeks later, the pain came back, in a big bad way. I was up all night, thinking I had food poisoning, and stayed home from work the next day.

(Quick side note on “up all night.” You hear that said a lot, and while I did get some sleep, at most it was 20-30 minutes at a time. I was getting delirious at one point, thought the dog had a human body and was crouching at the foot of the bed. It was weird.)

After my wife came home, and I explained that all day the pain never went away completely and I couldn’t sleep and so on, we decided to go to the local Medstop.

Since I said I had abdominal pain, they saw me fairly quickly. The nurse asked all the questions, and pressed on all the things in my stomach.

“You guys get to go to the emergency room.”

She couldn’t say for sure that I had appendicitis, but the symptoms were there and I needed a hospital to be 100% sure. They called ahead and we went to the emergency room.

Again, they asked all the questions and poked at all the things. I was admitted and the doctor was fairly sure it was appendicitis. I got an IV installed and they took some blood. Those tests came back showing my body was seriously fighting an infection.

Surgery was scheduled and I was put under.

It was a laparoscopic surgery, all I have now are three small scars. Recovery took the rest of the week, and the most painful part was the pain in my shoulder. (They pump CO2 into your body to make room for the surgery. Some of it gets stuck and migrated into your shoulder until your body absorbs it.)

Now, nearly two weeks later, I’m feeling pretty darn good.

On another note, I was able to send out some query letters last Sunday, and got a response from one (another negative). Oh well.

And so the story goes.

–Steven