Sickbed stories

We've all had our fair share of bouts with the flu, probably most of us within the past few months.

Two years ago, I had what I thought was my worst battle with the bug until I had an equally unpleasant few days earlier this week.

Up until that point, I had only one experience where I began wondering if my time here was reaching an ending point.

Just so I can throw in a "Golden Girls" reference, "Picture it, Palmerton 2000." I wasn't too far removed from high school graduation, and probably pondering what my future years had in store, when I started getting sharp pains in my abdomen.

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you I couldn't stand up.

After several days of putting up with it, my dad finally dragged me up to Dr. Nicholson for a diagnosis. I was probably in the office for five minutes when he asked what surgeon I preferred to see.

At that point, the prevailing thought was that my appendix was ripe for removal. However, after some exploratory surgery, it turned out my umbilical cord never dissolved properly on the inside. That led to the cord starting to wrap around my intestine.

To answer the most prominent question, no that is not common.

Somebody has to be held responsible for this. I blame my mother. She's the one responsible for all that cord stuff, right? There aren't too many other ways you can point the finger for this one.

Now that the unpleasant part of the story is out of the way, I can discuss what I consider the highlight of the experience; my first run-in with morphine.

When I woke up after surgery feeling no pain, the surgeon was in my room discussing a few things when I asked him, "You find anything good in there? You didn't sew anything up in there did you?"

That's not something a still relatively shy 18-year-old me would have said to a complete stranger without morphine.

Later, Terry Steinmetz, my old boss at Blue Ridge Country Club, stopped by my room, and the only thing I remember telling him was he couldn't light up a cigarette in the hospital. They frowned upon that.

I ended up going back in the hospital a second time after the surgery. I was still in the hospital on the day I was supposed to move in to Elizabethtown College for my freshman year.

When I finally got to school a couple days late, everyone was concerned that all I ate was Jell-O. They were also mad because I got permission to skip any freshman orientation activities I "didn't feel up to attending."

Eventually, I returned to eating solid food and resuming normal, everyday life.

To this day that remains my only surgery, and hopefully we'll keep it that way for a while.