Complex Numbers

Appendices

7. I've had my appendix removed.

In early May, 2002, I developed what I thought was food poisoning due to Red Lobsteritis.

My first sign that something was very, very wrong was when I threw up. I'd had food poisoning before, and it was always bad, but the last time I'd thrown up was the first time I'd overindulged in beer, nearly 20 years earlier. Actually, it wasn't beer, but that pale amber swill that passes for beer when you're in your teens - Milwaukee's Best, it was. The Beast, we called it.

That's the root of my beer snobbery.

This time, though - when I finally got to the hospital, they told me I was just in time, it was about to rupture Any Minute Now, and they'd schedule me for surgery "right away." "Right away" turned out to be about 12 hours later, which, combined with the previous 12 hours, was easily the most miserable single day of my life. The one good thing that came from that day was that, in order to distract my mind from the unending agony, I worked out a method to convert any decimal number to binary using only my fingers (larger numbers require toes, too) in my head. Surprisingly, I remembered the technique afterward, though I've never been able to put it to practical use, seeing as how I have computers and calculators for that kind of crap.

They said laparoscopic surgery would be "easier" on me. What they meant was that it would allow the hospital to discharge me faster. I still couldn't stand up or lie down on my own.

In "Lost," which we've been picking up from Netflix, one of the major characters has to have his appendix removed on the island, using primitive surgical techniques. The next day, he's up and doing heroics.

Don't you fucking believe it.

I did get one decent funny story out of the ordeal, which I had to delve into the musty depths of my previous blog to recover:

"The Snake Story"