Is there an appendicitis epidemic and is Karl Rove RESPONSIBLE?

[Ripley]

Just kidding about the Rovian paranoia.

I never knew anyone who had appendicitis until my Dad did 6 weeks ago. Kind of scary, he's 73 and a heart patient. But it hadn't burst yet and he had emergency surgery (5 hours later) and is okay now. Then on Friday a good friend in his late 40's had to be taken to the Emergency room for it...and the horror is that he had to wait 21 fucking hours before the hospital operated on him! Thankfully his didn't burst either. This happened in two different states.

From these recent experiences, I would just like to share with DUers that if you or someone you know is having severe abdominal pain (and it can be lower or upper on either or any sides), can't eat and is trying to write it off as "indigestion" or whatever...take it SERIOUSLY. And please take note, you do not have to have a fever to be having appendicitis!! In both cases, the patients were told (by EMT and nurses) that it couldn't be that because of no fever. Bullshit! If you have a fever with this, it has already burst and you only have hours to live if they don't remove the ape-tail and hose out your organs...and you could DIE!

Sorry for the personal medical rant, but I am angry and ashamed at what happened to people close to me and I don't want it to happen to anyone else. If I can read Web MD and understand fever is not a prerequisite for appendicitis, why the hell don't American medical staffs know that?????

[King Coal]

1. It's very hard to diagnose.

[Ripley]

3. Are you joking?

Appendicitis has been around forever. Wouldn't that be one of the first things checked for when someone has all of the symptoms? The technology is so advanced these days...they ran scans on these guys within a few hours. How can you not diagnose a leaking organ part?

Are you a doctor?

[Fovea]

2. Not Karl

Bill Frist is responsible. The number of resistant superbugs has increased, and the number of new antibiotics as compared to new erectile dysfuntion drugs should tell you where our priorities lie.

These bugs are often responsible for catastrophic organ failure.

Bill Frist *is* the HMO pharma insurance complex.

[maveric]

4. Didnt Kleeb just recently have an apendectomy?

[Auntie Bush]

5. My Mother, my sister and I all had appendicitis within two

years of one another. Maybe it also runs in families! All the females in our family got it...but none of the men! Coincidences do happen don't they. :shrug: Or, according to some Harvard Proffessor...maybe we females are just inferior to men!

[Ripley]

6. But in this case, they were both male.

I posted this in GD because I think it is important for people to know about the symptoms, or lack thereof. They moved it to the lounge...???

Oh well.

You do have a point AB about women being treated inferiorly (is that a word) than men in medical situations.

Okay, another **WARNING** **DANGER** from Ripley: Women, yes, I'm talking to you. My friend who is a retired nurse tells me that women often have extremely different heart attack symptoms than men. She used to be an ER nurse and says many women have back pain, not chest pain.

Just an FYI.

[amazona]

8. heart attack symptoms

My mom's symptom was being tired. The doctor tried to say she was suffering from depression. She wasn't treated until she had an episode of severe, incapacitating pain such that she had to be evacuated by ambulance.

I'm told another symptom seen in women is nausea but, strangely enough, my dad's symptom of his heart attack was nausea, and they only found out it happened because of testing for some enzyme (?). He thought he had the flu and kept trying to walk around for a couple of weeks.

It's all scary. I hope your dad and other loved ones get well SOON.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Midlodemocrat]

10. Same with my mom

and after her first heart attack and stent placement, she again got 'tired', laid down to take a nap and went to sleep forever.

[priller]

7. My son and I had appendicitis within a month of each other

I'm not sure if that means it's contagious, but perhaps it means that appendicitis can be triggered by something external?

[applegrove]

9. You are correct sir! Psychopsy is as old as the hills built out of the

dead bodies.

I'd like you to take a look at BTK and how the only wrinkles he has are thinking one across his forehead - not feelings ones. Then go to Rove and check out his wrinkles.

Do they have the laugh lines and crows feet of your average 55+ white male? Do they have a multitude of wrinkles you would get from feeling? OR are their wrinkles from the thinking they have to do instead. (They have tested sociopaths and when asked to solve an emotional problem the MRI shows it is solved like a math problem would be).

Someone get me the pictures!! Let us compare & contrast right here, right now!!

[Patiod]

11. My grandfather died of the side effects of a burst appendix

but it was the 30's and there weren't good antibiotics.

Also, I interview docs for a living, and an OB/G was telling me today that drugs for women are less likely to get on managed care formulary than drugs for men, and procedures done on women pay less than similar procedures done on men. But then again, who is sitting on P&T committees deciding these thing?

[Atlas Mugged]

12. I'm amazed, really.

I hadn't heard a thing about appendicitis for YEARS. Then, last November, my brother was hospitalized for emergency surgery. Yes, he nearly died because he kept insisting that he was "okay" and it was just something he ate. Recently - I've been hearing about it a LOT. Fortunately, mine was removed many years ago while they were already in there removing a bullet. Long story.