Farewell appendix

This past Saturday was friends and family day up at the park. I was up bright and early at around 5am because of abdominal pain. I was at the park around noon, and by this time I was verging on excruciating pain. I really wanted to see my friends go down the hill and take some pics, and in all reality I had planned on volunteering catching sleds or sending them down or something, but all I could manage was laying on the floor in the finish house and listening for their names on the PA. The moment my last friend got down the hill, we beelined it home.

First, a little history so you can understand my demented rationale for not going straight to the hospital. I have had several appendicitis episodes over the past year or so. The first one happened while I had a flu or something, so I figured it was just a really, really bad flu. It subsided after a day or so. This happened a few more times. Most recently was the flight to Italy in December. So, these episodes always passed within a couple of days. I figured this one would as well, so I waited through a sleepless Saturday night. By Sunday morning I decided that I wanted to know what was going on. I still wasn't sure it was my appendix because I wasn't showing some of the "classic" symptoms like nausea and vomiting. The fact that it had come and gone before didn't jibe with what I understood about appendicitis either. I thought it set in and didn't stop until you removed the appendix or it ruptured.

I drove myself over to St Marks just before eleven and was reeling in pain waiting to get checked in. A nurse took pity on me after about a half hour and brought me to an examination room to get things rolling. I've never had morphine before, and I can't say I am a fan. Makes me feel constricted in my head. My blood work showed an elevated white cell count. The cat scan confirmed appendicitis. They moved me to a normal hospital room to wait for surgery. Finally, they trucked me down to the holding room for surgery. I have a friend who is a colorectal surgeon, who had said he would stop by for the surgery. I was pleasantly surprised when he walked in the holding room ready for surgery. Nice to have a friend there for your inaugural surgical procedure. The procedure was a laproscopic removal, and my friend ran the scope while the other surgeon did the operation. I turned blue and thrashed for air while coming out of anesthesia, I think because the lubricant they use to insert the air supply tube into my windpipe clogged me up momentarily when they removed the air supply line. This caused one of the three entry point to bleed a bit, but apparently it is okay.

I am healing up well enough, and I have only good things to say about the process at St Marks. Luckily, my season ended naturally two weekends ago with Western Regional Qualifiers. I placed second every day, and consequently second overall. I am happy with this. At the very least, I am qualified for team trials again next season, which was my main objective. I used the same sled that had been squashed on the way to Europe, but set it up as straight as I could with shims and put a new saddle axle in place. I feel that it was still running slow, but I can't complain.

There is no more sliding available in Park City for skeleton athletes. Although there will be ice for at least another month, it will be allocated to revenue-rich passenger rides. Ice will be available through April in Lake Placid. Everyone that I will be competing against in team trials either already lives at the Olympic Training Center in LP or will be training for at least some, if not all of April in Lake Placid. This puts me at a disadvantage on several fronts for skeleton. I could really use some more ice time to square away equipment for next season, and I am not as strong a slider in Lake Placid as I am in Park City which stands to hurt my trials ranking. The reason I am not going is that more unpaid time away from work would jeopardize me in just about every other category of my life.