Quote Originally Posted by ian_of_smeg16
I was put into hospital with stomach pains about two days after my birthday, the doctors just thought i just had a stomach bug, so they released me with pain-relief drugs.
That weekend me and my friends went into Town to celebrate me coming out of hospital two days before. I suddenly felt a blinding pain in my stomach, as two of my friends couldn't care less, one guy practically carriend me half way across town to where my dad was getting his hair cut. I rushed into hosital where i spent the three days laughing and joking with the nurses, putting a brave face on it all.
Then, despite my cheerful desposition, the surgeon decided to take me into the OR and give me an apendictomy. four hours later, after an operation that should have taken 45 minutes, the surgeon said to my mum.
"His appendix has been burst for three days, he shoudn't have lived this long, if he hadn't had an operation tonight, he would have been dead by tomorrow morning, he had 10 hours to live."

My parents and friends thought it was the bravest thing they'd seen, in truth i was a coward 'cos i didn't want to talk to my parents about it. Even when i was going to the operating theater, joking with the anaesthetists about 'gas chambers' and such, i was terrified.
I threw up almost non-stop when my appendix was about to burst, and I jumped a few feet when it finally burst, I had to be taken to the hospital and got operated on christmas day iirc. The pain was a lot less after it had burst though.

The really stupid thing was that a while before it happened, I had gone to the doctor because of the pain, he said it was probably just stomach pain and didn't do any further tests, even though my mother had suggested it might be my appendix !

I still had 24h to live or something when I went into surgery, so it was a bit of a close call, but i wouldn't call it a near death experience. I was only 6 at the time though, hell of a thing to go through...