Inner Assault
The amusing account of one man’s skirmish with his insides.
When I opened my eyes, I knew something was wrong.
The intricate systems inside the human body often go unappreciated until something isn’t right. There are no thank-you cards for insulin and lactase when they break down the pint of ice cream you ate after you failed a test. And there are no Organ of the Month awards given to the lungs for keeping you alive and such. I really should be more outwardly grateful to my inner functions, because I take a moderate amount of pride in eating garbage food often enough that my body is strengthened by the challenge. I imagine my insides hate me the same way anyone would hate a tough and relentless personal trainer.
I often wonder which body is truly the strongest body: the one nourished by a healthy vegan diet that would implode after ingesting a day-old cheddarwurst from 7/11, or the one fortified by constant tests of digestion that could handle five of those cheddarwursts like pretzels in a blender? No matter the answer, I’ve always strived to live according to the Ron Swanson mentality toward food: “When I eat, it is the food that is afraid.” So to be pulled out of a deep sleep for what felt like gas pain was concerning. Normally my organs on the night shift just figure that out and release the gas without waking me for approval.
As I lay in bed, I analyzed every beverage, meal, and snack that I had ingested the previous day. Nothing seemed especially troublesome. After three hours of laying in discomfort in the dark, I fell out of bed and drug myself to the shower. The morning routine included a little more sitting on the toilet than normal, but nothing eased the pain. The unknown (and undoubtedly evil) entity inside of me was only on phase one. If this kept up all day, the miserable experience of selling pest control door-to-door, which was the only thing on the agenda that day (and every other day that summer), was going to be more hell than normal. And the morning donut and beverage, which was usually the only thing that kept me sane, didn’t interest me. I was in no mood to eat.
Since it wasn’t my day to drive the carpool, I was dropped off in a strange neighborhood and left to knock doors on my own. I either don’t have the man-cold gene or it hadn’t reached maturity, so no one knew I was secretly dying inside. After the car left, I shuffled slowly down the sidewalk for a block while I tried to imagine who would come to my funeral. I eventually found a secluded, grassy spot to lie down, which just happened to be a cemetery. As I lay in the grass, watching the clouds drift through the blue sky, I yearned for the sweet release of pain that the dead bodies beneath me enjoyed.
I reluctantly decided to give my symptoms to the internet and see what the always-err-on-the-side-of-worst-case-scenario medical blogs had to say. Surprisingly, the answer the internet gave me was not cancer. The evil entity inside of me — with an unyielding vendetta to bring me down — was my appendix.
For 21 long years, that little worthless piece of flesh had been plotting its attack. But why? Was it because it had been brainwashed by a steady diet of complaints from my colon, which, in spite of how flawlessly it processed my late-night Taco Bell indulgences, had never been awarded Organ of the Month? Or was it an inferiority complex that fueled it to go kamikaze and try to take me down as its last living effort?
“We don’t know 100%, but we are pretty sure it’s your appendix,” the doctor said. “It might heal itself if you want to go home and wait. We don’t have to jump into surgery.”
If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I probably would have laughed. It was all I could do to tell them calmly to cut the damn thing out of me. I didn’t care if it would heal itself. That little guy was not going to spend another day inside of me.
After surgery, the doctor sent me home with plenty of pain meds and instructions not to walk too much for a while. I hadn’t even considered how wonderful a doctor’s order not to walk around would be. Not only did I get to stay home while everyone else went out and knocked on doors, I got to watch TV high all day. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!
At that point in the summer, I only had about two weeks left to knock doors. If you don’t know, the benefit of doing summer sales is getting your backend payments. You only get about 50 percent of your commissions up front. If you choose to go home early, you forfeit your backend commissions. So the incentive is to stay the whole summer. However, as I cried through a movie that absolutely did not merit tears (I blame the drugs), I began to realize there was a potential loophole: a doctor’s note.
During my check-up appointment a few days later, without me even bringing it up, the doctor noticed the general dread I had for going back to work. My face doesn’t hide things like that well. I explained that I was only in the city for a couple more weeks. She looked up from her notes, and with a half smile, said, “I don’t want you walking too much for two weeks.” And for what felt like the first time that summer, I smiled a real, genuine smile.
The summer I spent doing summer sales was easily one of the lowest points in my life. I hated the work, and the work literally took all the waking hours of my day. In the end, I was able to shave a little more than two weeks off of that time because of my appendix. Who knows if I would have survived another two weeks.
As time has passed, I have thought a lot about the events of that summer. I have since begun to consider an alternate theory about the motives of my appendix. Maybe the little guy was actually on my team. Maybe it knew it was a worthless piece of flesh, but it decided to do everything in its power to be more than that. It knew it would die someday, so why not choose to go out in the exact moment when its death would do the most good? No matter its motives, my appendix wasn’t the hero I asked for, but it was the hero I needed.
Thank you, Appendix. 2010 Organ of the Year.
