The Appendix

techsupportrich

Rich here, just home from the hospital this morning. Fully off the Morphine for a day or so and happier for it.

Rym, Scott, I simply cannot thank you enough for that shout out. Allison was an absolute star and managed to update my iPod for me so I could listen to the show in bed. My official line is now that I was stabbed on 8 Mile.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to me as they were less than helpful at the hospital(the NHS, wonderful and free when you need it but everyone seens a bit pissed off), but I believe it was an inflamed appendix. Very strange because nothing happened to me, I didn't fall, wasn't hit, didn't eat anything bad, just woke up and needed an operation or I'd die. That's absolutely nuts!

Unfortunately they wouldn't let me get a photo of the appendix (they said it goes off to a lab for testing somewhere. I wouldn't like to open the mail there on a Monday morning) but I did get a photo of the wound, so for those of you who love to see slightly gross things, you can see it here

http://www.frappr.com/?a=viewphoto&id=779816&pid=1711036

I'm off to have a go at installing OpenSUSE on my laptop as a little healing project.

TheWhaleShark

Well, the appendix is entirely vestigal in humans; all it does is fill up with toxins and crap. It actually had a function in earlier ancestor organisms, but that functionality has long since been lost with the march of evolution.

Actually, the appendix is one of those organs that's useful for demonstrating the principles of evolution and providing more evidence to our current understanding of it. Basically, it used to have function in herbivorous progenitor organisms, where the organ was used to actually digest cellulose from the cell walls of plants. Horses, and other similar grazing animals, still have a somewhat functional analogue of an appendix, though the digestion of cellulose winds up being useless because of its placement in the digestive tract.

Yeah. That's probably more than you needed to know about the appendix.

EDIT: The whole point of saying that, by the way, was to point out that the appendix can fuck up for any number of reasons, because the human body has no need for it. Appendicitis just kinda happens.

Andrew

That picture actually looks really good for what happened. My dad had to get his removed last summer and it was so infected they could not staple it together. He had to keep it open with gauss stuck in it for two weeks cleaning out the hole twice a day. It was not a pretty sight to say the least and he has a horrible scar now but all is well. Fuck those poison sacs haha

I hope all goes well and that you make a full recovery man : D Best wishes.

baltmatrix

Way back in high school my friend had his taken out. The doctors said that it was horribly infected and that when they dropped it into the metal tray after removing it, the sucker burst. Yeah he was lucky.

Ametto

My parents used to tell me that appendicitis was caused by running around too much after eating. I don't know whether that is true or not.