They Cut Me Open. Ow.

Part of me will always be in the Dominican Republic: my appendix.

So I was supposed to fly home to Eugene today. Here's what happened.

It all started Monday morning when I woke up with cramps so bad that I was crying, but I went to my site anyway because there was a lot of work to get done and I couldn't afford to take the day off. It was also my mom's birthday, so I called her while we were at the cemetery wall but she was too tired to talk so I just sang happy birthday.

So after we got back from sites around 4pm, the only thing I could do was go lay in bed because my cramps hurt like nothing ever and my entire right side hurt and shot pain clear up through my neck every time I took a breath. I slept through supper, only because I couldn't walk to the dining hall.. although I wasn't really sleeping, I was just laying in bed trying to stay still. Anyway, about 10 pm my parents called the intern phone and I just started crying and telling them how bad it hurt. My mom got really worried and called Nate, my boss. He wound up coming over to pick me up and bring me to the clinic, this is about 11 pm. Alba, our doctor, examined me and then they called in another doctor, Elvira, and she did a sonogram on my stomach. They decided that I should go down to Santiago first thing in the morning to see if I had appendicitis.

Long story short, after being pricked with about 20 thousand needles and examined by 40 million doctors, they took my appendix out on Tuesday afternoon, my mom arrived in Santiago around noon the next day (Wednesday), and I was able to leave the hospital around 5:30 on Wednesday. So yeah.

Alba owes me 15 lollipops so far, one for each time I was stuck with a needle. Check this out, this is how great it is to be me.. Apparently I have skin "muy duro" and it's really hard to find a vein for an IV. I have 5 IV needle marks on my left hand, 1 on my left forearm, and 3 on my right hand. If you've ever had an IV, you know that IV needles hurt more than anything ever. I also got blood drawn twice from my left, umm, ...elbow pit, not sure what else to call it, and I've gotten 2 shots so far in each of my buttcheeks.

So yeah. All that to say, it sucks to be me right now. But I'm feeling better. I'm walking around, eating normal food, having visitors, watching movies, and taking vicodin. It's really nice having my mom here, especially since I have to stay until the 18th now because I can't travel today. But yeah.

Oh, another kinda weird thing that my mom told me, she said that she woke up in the middle of the night Sunday night around 3:30 am with horrible cramps and shooting pains in her stomach like she had never felt before. 3:30 their time was 6:30 our time, which is when I woke up on Monday morning and had my pain. She said that her stomach killed all day long but as soon as she hung up the phone after talking to me when I told her what was wrong that night, the pain was gone. Weird, huh?

Yup, well, that's what's up with life here in the DR.