Listen to Your Body

On Friday morning, Dorene woke up with some severe pain in her lower abdominal area. She first thought it could be appendicitis, but wasn't sure. She took the day off work and decided to go see her doctor later in the afternoon. The pain subsided a bit but was still there throughout the day, although she went with a friend to some garage sales.

At her doctor's appointment, she was told she needed to go to the ER to get tested. Dorene questioned it and was asking, "well, what if it's just some intestinal thing?" The doctor said that she had to play it safe and go get tested. So, somewhat reluctantly, Dorene went to the ER.

I joined her there after work as she was waiting the results of the test. After a couple hours, the nurse came in and said, "You have appendicitis, the surgeon will be down in about an hour to talk about the surgery tonight." Actually, the surgeon came down in about 15 minutes and the preparations were immediately made. He said it was "early" appendicitis. I figured that meant real trouble was a few weeks or months away. He said, no, real trouble was 48 to 72 hours away.

So, Dorene was wheeled up to surgery. One of the surgical assistants on duty that night was a woman named Esther, a good friend of Dorene's and Bible Study regular. Another assistant was part of a family from our former church. So, that was nice. Neither of us was worried about the procedure, and Dorene was especially shocked that she even needed to have surgery, she just didn't think she really had appendicitis.

Surgery was over in about 20 minutes. Dorene came home yesterday and under doctor's orders, will be off work this week. We've already had one family from our church bring us dinner and have been told not to worry about the rest of the week. That's certainly nice.

I am so glad listened to what her body was telling her. Sometimes we can tell others what they should do when it comes to medical issues, but ignore the same advice when it comes to us. Dorene followed through and because of that, prevented what could have been a much more dire situation later in the weekend.