Great. I just love going to a doctors’ office to sit in a waiting room for an hour and then go in and have someone poke and prod at you to find out what’s wrong. I’ll probably get prescribed some repulsive tasting medicine that not even a dog would go near. I crawl up the stairs and put on something comfortable, but decent enough. I pack something to do while I wait, and get a glass of juice. Before I know it, I’m in the car being whisked to the surprise of my life.



It was just as I thought, and we sat in that foul smelling waiting room for at least a solid half hour, and I was dying of boredom just wishing they would call me in and get it over with already, when finally they called my name.
“Halie?” A nice looking nurse says. She says it like Hallie, with two L’s, like most people do when they first see my name.
“Halie, and yeah that’s me,” here we go… at least the nurse looked nice enough.
“I’m sorry Halie, now how are we feeling today?” she chirps.
“I have a stomachache,” I say like she should know.
“Hmm… there seems to be a tummy bug going around right now. I’ll just run a few tests to see what we get, okay?” I nod my head yes, not liking how she is so cheerful. It was great that she was nice, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s face it, a doctors’ office is not exactly a happy place. So she runs the usual tests, not finding anything out of the ordinary or anything with any significance.
“Okey dokey, it looks like you’re in good shape, but I’ll let Dr. Reynolds come and take a look at you anyway,” she explains.
“Okay.” Thank Chewbacca. That means this whole tirade is almost over. I could only take so much more, and my pain was ever growing. What the heck did she mean I was in “good shape”? I knew there was something that she wasn’t catching on to. Hopefully Dr. What’s his face could figure it out. It takes him a long time to finally make his way to my room, and I never know what takes them so long. Surely he doesn’t take care of every patient?
“Alright… Halie?” he asks.
“That’s me,” I reply.
“What seems to be the issue today?” He asks absentmindedly, while looking through a bunch of papers.
“I have a stomachache,” I repeat. That was another thing that annoyed me- they asked you the same questions all the time. Did they not pay attention, or read it in their little report?
“Alright, I want you to lie back on the bed and I’m going to push on your stomach. I want you to tell me when it hurts, okay?” He takes three of his fingers and pushes on different areas of my abdomen, and I tell him when it hurts. The pain sort of feels like a balloon, trying to push its way outside of me, and when you touch it, it feels as though it may burst.
“Hmm… It seems as though you don’t have a true stomach problem, but the pain seems to be centered around the right hand side of your torso. It could be your appendix, or just cramps. I could transfer you over to the ER to make sure it’s not your appendix. I’ll go file some paperwork and then I’ll come back. But make sure you don’t eat anything, just in case it is your appendix,” he nods his head, and then turns out the door. My appendix… what the heck is an appendix? Isn’t that the thing in the back of a book? I look at my mom, and she has a very serious face on.
“Halie! That’s not your stomach that hurts, that’s your side. Your stomach is right here,” she balls her fist and presses it just under my ribs. “This could be more serious, like your appendix!”
“Well sorry, I didn’t know what else to call it, so I just said my stomach. What’s an appendix anyway?” I ask.
“It’s a tiny organ that is connected to your intestines somewhere. I don’t think it does anything at all,” she replies. I think of asking her why it would be a problem then, but then Dr. Whoever comes back in and we head for the emergency room.



We walk in after a short drive to Kishwaukee Community Hospital, or just Kish like everyone called it. It seems fairly busy, and this was when the H1N1 outbreak occurred, so there were people puking everywhere, or simply sitting a coughing with pink plastic tubs in their laps. Uugghh…. Just seeing them made my stomach churn, and my mom told me to grab a face mask from the front desk after we checked in. I was starving already, and it was probably around 3:00 p.m. and there was a vending machine teasing me with chips and assorted candy. After about an hour of waiting, a woman came in and sat across from my mom and I, and I couldn’t possibly help but notice that she was missing three of her fingers. Blood was dripping through the gauze onto the floor, and I began to feel nauseous. My mom struck up a conversation with her, and she seemed like a friendly person. She explained how she had been trying to build something at home, but had ended up sawing a few of her fingers off with a power saw. A fabulous story I’m sure, but I couldn’t look at her without bile rising in my throat.
After about another hour and a half, I was called into a room with a man who took a few tests and made me rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. I said six, and then he took my blood pressure and sent me back to wait while the results came in. Back in the waiting room, there was a new girl in a wheelchair. We had seen her earlier limping around, seeming to only have a sprained ankle. Now she was sitting in a wheelchair with her foot wrapped in a tan cloth, still getting up once in a while to get something. This made my mom mad because she was taken care of before we were.
“Your appendix could possibly explode, and this dumb girl is sitting here with a sprained ankle in the Emergency Room taking up space for more important cases. That mother of hers needs to tell her she’s fine and go home!” she exclaimed.
After another four extremely long and boring hours, we were brought to another room to hear some results. We probably waited another half hour before a pretty African American woman came in to talk to us.
“Hello, how are we feeling today?” she asked. That same old question.