Welcome back to The Pulling Curls Podcast! In today’s episode, Hilary Erickson shares her personal experience with appendicitis. From the initial symptoms to her time in the hospital and the recovery process, Hilary provides a detailed and eye-opening account of what it’s like to deal with a ruptured appendix. Tune in for valuable insights, emotional moments, and practical tips on navigating an unexpected medical crisis while balancing motherhood and daily life.
Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts
Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — they can really save you when the stuff hits the fan. If routines have only one fan it’s me — especially after this.
Links for you:
Timestamps:
00:00 Mom’s thoughts overwhelm before surgery; responsibilities linger.
05:07 High cost delayed treatment despite severe pain.
07:35 Delayed surgery led to complications, still satisfied.
11:03 Mom’s hospital worries: life insurance and minutiae.
15:18 Gnawing stomach pain caused anxiety and fear.
16:09 Grateful for doctor; small change improved everything.
19:36 Upcoming episodes: pregnancy exercise, health insurance.
Keypoints:
Hilary Erickson shares her recent experience with appendicitis, highlighting the details of her symptoms and diagnosis.
She describes the importance of routines, which helped her family manage during her absence.
Despite the signs, she initially attributed her stomach pain to other causes, including semaglutide and muscle pain.
Hilary discusses the tests for appendicitis, explaining the concept of rebound tenderness and how her symptoms differed.
She eventually went to the ER, detailing the financial concerns and pain that prompted her to seek medical help.
Her appendix had burst, leading to septic shock and a more complicated recovery process.
She emphasizes the challenges of hospital life, including the struggle to get rest and the limited food options.
Hilary voices the emotional weight of being a mom facing surgery, worrying about household tasks and family needs.
Post-surgery, she talks about her recovery process, the trauma of the event, and the importance of communicating with healthcare providers.
Upcoming episodes will cover topics like pregnancy exercise with Kaylee Cohen and her unconventional approach to health insurance.
Producer: Drew Erickson
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on Episode 247, we are talking about my appendicitis. Let’s untangle it. I mean, there’s nothing really to untangle anymore. It’s gone.
[00:00:12.110] – Hilary Erickson
Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, The Pulling Curls Podcast.
[00:00:40.210] – Hilary Erickson
This episode of the Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. Guys, I got to tell you that by having routines, we still somehow made it through me being gone for almost a week of our lives. So I cannot stress anymore how important getting in routines in your life is. Do it. Come join me in Family Routines.
[00:01:00.680] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, if you guys didn’t know, late August, my stomach started hurting, and I just thought, maybe it’s my semiglutide. You guys know I did an episode on that. Maybe it’s something I ate. I didn’t know. It did It was a little different than just regular stomach upset, which I will say with semiglutide, your stomach gets upset frequently, less so the more that I’ve learned how to manage it.
[00:01:24.700] – Hilary Erickson
But I was laying in bed on a Friday night and I was like, Oh, my stomach is hurting. And there was some lower right quadrant abdominal pain, but it really felt a lot like pregnancy ligament pain or pain I had felt before. But I just tried to ignore it. I told my husband to sleep down in the guest room because I was up moaning all night.
[00:01:42.240] – Hilary Erickson
I was just miserable, which usually with stomach pains, I am able to sleep. I take something for it. A lot of times I take DigestZen from Doterra. Not a doTERRA person, but somehow it seems to work for me.
[00:01:56.980] – Hilary Erickson
So I tried the things. In the back of my mind, I was like, Oh, right, lower quadrant abdominal pain. This could be an appendicitis. My cousin had actually had an appendicitis when he was visiting Scotland, crazy town. I was like, That’s insane. You’re only thinking this because he had an appendicitis earlier.
[00:02:17.490] – Hilary Erickson
When you’re checking for an appendicitis, in case any of you guys are wondering, some of the tests you do, you jump. That’s supposed to hurt a lot. Didn’t hurt anymore for me. I was hurting, but it didn’t hurt more when I jumped. It’s called rebound tenderness. So you push your hand in, and then when you pull your hand away, that really hurts. Pushing in hurt. Pulling my hand away didn’t hurt anymore. You’re supposed to push on the other side, and that’s supposed to be really painful, too. Wasn’t painful. It was really just painful when you pushed on the right side, enough that I would flinch if people tried to push on it.
[00:02:49.550] – Hilary Erickson
I also didn’t really have a fever. I tend to run low on my temperature anyway, but I was 99, maybe. I felt some chills, which I thought was I was like, Oh, this must be a stomach virus. I ignored so many things, you guys.
[00:03:05.520] – Hilary Erickson
So I called my DPC doctor the next morning, and we went through all the signs, and he was like, Well, you’re doing all the things. And the last thing before we hung up, he said, If it gets worse, you need to go to the ER. And I was like, Okay, cool. I mean, both of us, because I didn’t have all those signs, we both were like, You probably don’t have it.
[00:03:23.580] – Hilary Erickson
In retrospect, it had already busted, and so I didn’t have a lot of the signs that a lot of people would normally have. We’ll talk more about that. But that Saturday afternoon, Drew took the kids to go get something to eat. I hadn’t really eaten anything all day. If this is TMI, watch it. Don’t feel like you have to keep listening. I would throw up now and then, but I knew that I was throwing up mostly because of the pain, not so much that I was nauseated, GI symptoms.
[00:03:51.930] – Hilary Erickson
For me, I just noticed, Okay, why am I throwing up? It’s because of the pain. That happened also when I had kidney stones, when I was pregnant with Paige.
[00:03:59.410] – Hilary Erickson
Saturday, it It got way worse. Drew came home, and I was just desperate to try and find something to fix it. I had used heat all day thinking that it was muscle. I had used a massager, both poor choices. You’re not supposed to use heat on an appendicitis or massage it.
[00:04:14.880] – Hilary Erickson
So we went to the hospital. Now, in my mind, I knew that it was going to be like $1,000 just by going in that door. So that was part of what was holding me back. I’m not going to lie. But I know a lot of us have high deductibles, and you’re thinking, that’s a thousand bucks just to find out that it’s just a muscle thing.
[00:04:31.700] – Hilary Erickson
So it was holding me back. But by the time I was in so much pain, I was like, I don’t care. It would be worth $1,000 to get some pain medicine at this point.
[00:04:38.830] – Hilary Erickson
The doctors were great. I looked miserable by the time I got in. I could not stand up straight, which is another appendicitis sign.
[00:04:45.200] – Hilary Erickson
I was throwing up. It was ugly. It was real, real ugly. They got me back into triage within 20 minutes of me walking in the door, which I thought was amazing. I was afraid I was going to have to wait in the waiting room for hours, and I was so sick, and that would not have been fun at all.
[00:04:59.450] – Hilary Erickson
The doctors were good. They immediately said they would give me pain medicine. Side note, they gave me morphine and took me for a CT scan. That first dose of morphine did nothing. Second dose of morphine maybe started to touch it a little bit, and then they switched to fentanyl, and that started, and then they gave me dilated, and I was finally like, Okay, I’m going to live. But obviously, I was in a lot of pain. Dilated, normally just like… When I take dilated, I feel my soul draining into the bed. But it was worth it because I was in so much pain It took a lot of that away.
[00:05:31.630] – Hilary Erickson
Of course, with the hospital, I was like, trying to pick. I knew that choosing the hospital, it would choose my surgeon, it would choose how long I had to wait in the ER, it would choose billing, all of those different things.
[00:05:44.070] – Hilary Erickson
I finally just decided to go to the one that I thought was the closest to us. So when you go to the ER, I think a lot of people don’t know how it really works. Initially, you go to registration, they take your name, what’s wrong. They may have taken my temperature. I think they may have taken my oxygen level. And then will you pay?
[00:06:01.920] – Hilary Erickson
They get you all the information so that you’ll pay when you’re done. Then you see a triage nurse back with a curtain. Then she brings in a doctor. They order the IV, the pain meds, the labs, and the CT scan. That’s the order that it went in. First off, they put in an IV. They couldn’t get it in a couple of times. Then finally, another nurse got it in.
[00:06:21.680] – Hilary Erickson
My veins were just gone. I was dehydrated. Later, we would find out that I was in septic shock because the bacteria had entered my bloodstream. I was really sick at the point that I got there. The CT scan showed that I had an appendicitis. They’re looking for the size of the appendicitis. I think they’re looking for drainage in the area.
[00:06:39.540] – Hilary Erickson
Mine was big. They said that she said it was the biggest that she had seen. I don’t know how often they read CT scans of appendicitis, but I did it right, probably because I put heat on and massage it like an idiot.
[00:06:50.440] – Hilary Erickson
That night, I saw surgeons, and they were like, We’re going to wait till the morning, which I thought was a little bit weird. I later have gone back and asked my surgeon, Why didn’t they do it the night of if I had real hot appendicitis? He was like, Well, I probably would have. But they made the choice to wait until the next morning.
[00:07:06.270] – Hilary Erickson
I felt some like if I had gotten it done Friday night, maybe it wouldn’t have burst and I wouldn’t have all the complications that I ended up having. But ultimately, I came to the realization that because they waited, I ended up having the surgeon that I did have who I really liked and I think did a very thorough job of the surgery. And so ultimately, I was very happy with it. But I will say that I’ve had a lot of times where I was thinking back, did I make the right choice?
[00:07:30.950] – Hilary Erickson
You’ll notice little bits of trauma that Hilary is picking up as she’s going through this, just like people in any part of the hospital, including labor and delivery, had.
[00:07:39.660] – Hilary Erickson
And then I asked my providers about this later on. Why did we end up having this choice? Why did we end up doing this? That was just one of the things that I was surprised. They didn’t take me back into it that night. They actually took… It was 11:30 the next morning. I waited. I was into the hospital by 07:00 PM, was diagnosed by 08:00 PM. They waited probably 15 hours to do the surgery. There you go.
[00:08:01.500] – Hilary Erickson
They did start infusing IV antibiotics because either way, with an appendicitis, that means you have an infection going on in there. Also, my white blood count was high enough and my lactate levels were high enough that they felt like they needed to get antibiotics on board. That night, they put me in an observation room where I could just hear everything that was going on. It was like just part of a hallway. That’s how I slept the night before my surgery. I would use the word slept in air quotes.
[00:08:30.600] – Hilary Erickson
I heard everything about the guy next to me who was having prostate issues, which just made me giggle. I was already on dilated, so I was feeling pretty good at this point, but him and his prostate issues were the absolute funiest to me. I just waited through the night.
[00:08:44.250] – Hilary Erickson
My favorite thing is every time the nurse came in, she goes, Try and get some rest. I was like, You’re over there typing. You’re talking to prostate man, you’re talking to people in the hallway. How the heck am I supposed to be able to rest?
[00:08:53.610] – Hilary Erickson
I really wish that I had taken earbuds with me to the hospital when I got admitted. That isn’t something that was on my my radar. I briefly glazed over. Maybe I should grab my earbud. I really wish they had been there. I did bring my tablet. I brought an external battery and lip balm because everybody needs lip balm in the hospital.
[00:09:14.250] – Hilary Erickson
Starting that evening, I could no longer have food or drink. They wouldn’t give me… They wouldn’t even give me ice chips, like nothing. And that was super annoying because my mouth was really dry and I was just miserable. I really, really wanted water, but they didn’t give it to me. I hate nurses, just kidding. But that part was really annoying to me.
[00:09:34.770] – Hilary Erickson
I remember I was wheeling up for the operation and all I could think about was like, They’re going to intubate me. You are going to go on that table. And it was all these things that I had seen done a million times. It was super overwhelming to me because all I could think was, They’re going to intubate you. I do not like intubating patients. I’ve done it in C-sections before, but I wasn’t really nervous when I got to the OR. I knew that it needed to be done, but all I kept thinking was, they are going to intubate you. And they did. They did intubate me.
[00:10:03.530] – Hilary Erickson
I did want to say that as I was going into the OR, all these things about being a mom flooded into my brain, I was like, Drew, this is my password. Drew, you know where the life insurance is, right? When a Mom goes into the hospital, there are so many thoughts that come with you. My daughter needed a new cell phone plan.
[00:10:21.600] – Hilary Erickson
Her cell phone plan was going to be up the next week, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, how are we going to do that? Who’s going to do that if I’m not around? There were just all these tiny little minutia that I was carrying around with me that I was like, We’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to fix that.
[00:10:35.650] – Hilary Erickson
Sometimes I don’t think I thought enough about what a mom was going through when they were taking this time out of their life to go into the OR, but that was just something that really struck me, and I wanted to remember moving forward.
[00:10:48.440] – Hilary Erickson
Then I got out of anesthesia. I hated coming out of general anesthesia. It was just the absolute worst. I don’t know why. I wasn’t nauseated. I really wasn’t in pain. Just coming out of the drugs was just so miserable to me. That was something that really surprised me. I’ve had lots of patients under general anesthesia. I didn’t know how much I would just hate everything about coming out of general anesthesia. I was actually only in PACU for half an hour. I came out really well and then got wheeled to Drew back in that same little curtained area.
[00:11:21.060] – Hilary Erickson
In the surgery, though, they found that my appendix had burst. It was also necrotic. Probably this thing had been festering for a while. I’ve had a lot of friends who were like, Did you know you had an appendicitis festering in there for a while?
[00:11:35.100] – Hilary Erickson
I had had this pain on and off, and I just thought it was ligament pain. It felt a lot like ligament pain in pregnancy, because if you’ve been pregnant before, you know that you have a ligament that connects to your hip that holds your uterus on. I’ve had this pain on and off, probably since I had Paige, and haven’t really paid attention to it. Now, it was never this painful. It would just be moments. I don’t know if it was my appendix or not, but I didn’t have any other signs. It didn’t continue for a while, somehow I managed it.
[00:12:02.130] – Hilary Erickson
But there was contents of my GI tract. There was the pus from the appendix, and the appendix was starting to look necrotic. So all of that had to be rinsed out, washed out, put on antibiotics. There is a big difference between just an appendicitis versus a perforated appendicitis.
[00:12:18.810] – Hilary Erickson
I will say that when I went to the hospital, I thought, Oh, I’m just going to get it out, and I’ll be home. Maybe not tonight, but by Sunday night, I would be home. Wrong.
[00:12:27.910] – Hilary Erickson
Once your appendix perforated, he wanted four days of IV antibiotics at the hospital. When I saw infection control, that was even more than that. When they’re in there, they use lots of fluids to try and wash out anything that’s around your appendicitis because if anything stays in there and doesn’t get taken care of by antibiotics, it can lead to an abscess, which my cousin, who had previously had his appendicitis, ended up getting an abscess. So all of that was in my mind.
[00:12:54.890] – Hilary Erickson
Here, I’m recording this 18 days after the surgery. So far, I don’t have any abscess. I’m thinking by Friday or Sunday, I should be out of the woods. But it is something to watch for, especially if you’ve had a perforated appendix. So I went back to my room. I was on clear liquids, and at this point in time, I didn’t even want to drink. It was so annoying to me that I had wanted to drink so bad.
[00:13:16.620] – Hilary Erickson
And then once I could drink, I was like, I do not want to drink. I didn’t want to do anything. But they had me on clear liquids for a day and a half. And clear liquids is the literal absolute worst. You got to think that they were in there. They were playing with my intestines. They were power washing them. One of the biggest fears is that your intestines won’t restart. It can cause something called an ileus. And I knew all of this. So that’s why they put you on clear liquids first, and then they slowly advance you.
[00:13:40.110] – Hilary Erickson
But I got to tell you, they had clear Insure that was the only thing on that tray that had any protein. And it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten. But I kept drinking it when they brought it because I thought, I need the protein to try and heal this. It was just the absolute worst. Along with that, there was juice and Jell-O. Honestly, I will never look at Jell-O the same. All of it was just so gross to me. Thank goodness for pain meds because they would put me to sleep between having to get meals.
[00:14:09.560] – Hilary Erickson
From there, they advanced me to a soft diet, and I actually ate cream of wheat, and it was so gross. But it was the only thing on there that had fiber. As a nurse, you’re looking at bowel function and how you can maintain your bowel function.
[00:14:24.220] – Hilary Erickson
The eating at the hospital the first couple of days was just the worst. I had two full days where I wasn’t eating actual food, and I had this gnawing pain in my stomach that made me super anxious because I was concerned that that was going to lead to more pain.
[00:14:38.660] – Hilary Erickson
I think the appendicitis pain was worse than labor. That’s a personal opinion.
[00:14:44.470] – Hilary Erickson
But once you’ve had that type of pain, which again also comes with some fear with it because you’re not exactly sure what it is. I started to wonder if I had an ovarian torsion or if I had twisted my intestines. There were all these things in my mind because it was so painful. I wasn’t really aware that an appendicitis could get so painful. But because of that tiny pain that was in my stomach, I wasn’t interested in eating. I was just so anxious.
[00:15:09.000] – Hilary Erickson
I mentioned that to, I don’t know, every nurse that I had, they were like, How are you doing? I was like, Pain’s okay, but I just have this gnawing pain in my stomach. They would strike their heads and shoulders and be like, It’s just part of it. I did have a doctor right before I went home who was like, Hey, why don’t we throw some protonics? That could just be acid pain. It’s a really easy medicine to take. See if it helps. Totally helped.
[00:15:31.870] – Hilary Erickson
Suddenly, I had an appetite. It was amazing because that one doctor had listened to that symptom that was also tied to the trauma of the whole event. And because he was able to fix that one very small thing, this pill is only like a dollar, it changed everything for me. Suddenly, I was able to eat. The anxiety started to leave, and I just felt so much better.
[00:15:52.550] – Hilary Erickson
So grateful for good practitioners who listened. He even said, This is just a stab in the dark, but if it makes you feel better, then we’ll have a win. And it did. It made me feel so much better.
[00:16:03.320] – Hilary Erickson
I think it’s super important for patients to understand that when you’ve had a traumatic event, like an appendicitis, you’re carrying that trauma with you.
[00:16:12.040] – Hilary Erickson
You have the anxiety that it’s going to happen again, that something worse is going to happen, and to verbalize that with your practitioners, doctors, nurses, and just see if anybody has any ideas on how to make it better.
[00:16:22.540] – Hilary Erickson
Anyway, we were in the hospital, so the surgery was on Sunday. We got released on Wednesday, but then we went home with what they call hospital at home, where they continued to do antibiotics until Saturday morning. But a nurse who came morning and night, super, super helpful. We really appreciated them coming in. They would just do vitals. You’re actually still a patient of the hospital. You’re not actually discharged. You could go straight back to the hospital without having to be readmitted, but you’re at home, which I cannot tell you how bad sleep is at the hospital. It was just shocking to me, which is really dumb from somebody who has had to knock and come in in the middle of the night.
[00:16:58.920] – Hilary Erickson
But for the first night I was there, I swear it was every hour when somebody was coming in, including the PAs for surgery came in to look at my incision with their phone lights, 12:30 at night.
[00:17:12.350] – Hilary Erickson
I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. Anyway, slept better at home. Not amazing, but started to sleep better. Then I had those IV antibiotics. The thing that helped the most is the nurse, as I was getting discharged, she just talked about what I was going to see if there really was an appendicitis. She’s like, It’s not going to be fleeting abdominal pain. It’s not going to come and go. It’s going to be really painful. And that’s how you’re going to know. You’re going to take your temperature and you’re going to have a fever. And somebody talking to me about what I would actually see that was a viable complication really helped because, again, every little twinge of pain, I was like, Is this it? Am I going over the edge? Am I going to die?
[00:17:47.840] – Hilary Erickson
Shout out to great nurses and doctors out there. I then saw my surgeon the following Friday. He reminded me how very sick I was when I was back in the OR. And it’s really easy to just tell myself, I’m imagining and it wasn’t really a big deal, but it was nice for him to be like, You were really sick.
[00:18:03.880] – Hilary Erickson
You had a lot of infection, and I’m so glad that you came in when you did. I’m healing up really well. By the time I saw him, I had walked a mile. We were walking in the morning. I was really tired after we walked. It’s been really surprising how tired things make me, but I’m just slowly getting back to normal.
[00:18:21.380] – Hilary Erickson
That’s what happened with my appendicitis. What would I do differently? I probably would have gone to the hospital earlier on that morning, the Saturday morning. But other than that, there really isn’t that much you can do differently. You can’t order a CT at home. You have to go to the emergency room for this problem. I wish it hadn’t gotten as painful as it was, but it was there. If you’re going to do something, do it right.
[00:18:42.840] – Hilary Erickson
So meet me over on Instagram if If you guys have questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Thanks for listening. This is one of the longest episodes I recorded, but I had a lot of people who were interested in my journey, and I think suddenly being a patient at the hospital was just a big eye opener as to what I was going to experience and what people experience in labor and delivery, too. Just a good reminder.
[00:19:02.650] – Hilary Erickson
Stay tuned. We are going to talk about pregnancy exercise next week with Kaylee Cohen. Then the week after that, we are actually talking about how we do health insurance at our house, which is going to be interesting because we don’t have traditional health insurance, and I had this big thing happen in the hospital. I’m going to talk about how all of that works on that episode. So stay tuned.
[00:19:21.540] – Hilary Erickson
Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.
Keywords:
Hilary Erickson, Pulling Curls podcast, appendicitis, episode 247, nurse, pregnancy nurse, family routines, semaglutide, abdominal pain, lower right quadrant, DigestZen, doTERRA, rebound tenderness, ER visit, septic shock, CT scan, morphine, Fentanyl, Dilaudid, IV antibiotics, laparoscopic surgery, general anesthesia, post-operative recovery, hospital stay, clear liquids diet, hospital at home, protonics, infection control, surgeon, home healthcare, patient experience.
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