The Appendix Project 

24 hours is all it takes for the appendix to burst. Another 24 hours after that is all the victim has left. This means that from the point of infection until death a patient only has 48 hours. In illnesses like appendicitis, an incorrect diagnosis is much more than a medical error, it means death. What does it look like when a case of appendicitis is fatally misdiagnosed as a common illness, dismissed as a virus? That was my reality when I was 10 years old. That night we had eaten out and were on our way home. I remember sleeping peacefully in my bed. That was the last time I was going to sleep well for weeks. The next morning I woke up to a sharp pain in my right side. I tried to get out of bed and stand up straight but that wouldn't be happening for another month. I was forced to walk bent over, my left hand gripping my abdomen out of pain at all times. Forcing myself out of bed I pushed to my parents’ room and my mom woke up and stared at me with fear in her eyes. She knew something was very wrong. Immediately, she got me some water and I took one shallow sip, all my stomach would allow at the time. Thirty seconds later it was on the floor. That was the case with anything I would try to eat, nothing was digested, everything came back up. As the day progressed, I started becoming severely dehydrated. I remember the foul taste in my mouth paired with the absolute absence of water not being pleasant at all. The area around my eye sockets started to sink in and turn a brownish yellow. There I laid, sleeping through most of the day. My parents grew increasingly worried and rushed me to the ER at Tri-Star. There, I was diagnosed by a Nurse Practitioner. She took a quick look at me and asked me to stand up. I struggled to stand up straight, with the pain in my lower right side worse than ever. She ruled it as a common illness, a viral infection. That single decision, made with insufficient vigilance, could have brought my life to an abrupt end. My mother was unconvinced by the diagnosis, but she had no medical knowledge to stand on. She had never heard the word appendicitis. Neither had my father. We went home dependent on a wrong diagnosis, praying that it was right. Throughout the following day my case only worsened. I looked like a living corpse - eyes sunken in and dark, lips fractured - slowly dying. I hadn’t eaten anything for two days. That night I attempted to eat some saltine crackers and drink water, but still, to no avail. I remember my father sitting next to me as I tried to eat. I threw up again. I recall looking at him with my eyes full of tears from the raw pain of throwing up. My eyes said what I couldn't. They asked him to do something, anything. That's when he made the call, we were going to go to the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital ER. That was our last hope. On our way into the hospital I saw the statues of the children playing and asked my mom if I would ever get to do that again. As soon as we went into the hospital the staff recognized my condition. I was rushed onto a mobile bed, taken to a room, and hooked up to a glucose IV. I remember vividly how the thick cold fluid felt like ice shards piercing my shriveled, dehydrated veins. I was scheduled for surgery the next day, the first case. That night went by without me feeling it. The next morning my mother pressed a small picture of a saint and a verse into my palm. I also had a small cross in my hand. I went into surgery carrying both with me. The last things I remember before entering an anesthetic state are the tears rolling down my cheeks from the sting of the injections puncturing my arm, and the comforting voice of the anesthesiologist telling me that everything would be okay. My family waited outside. Case after case went in and came out. Mine did not. The reason my surgery had taken so long is because my appendix had ruptured in my body and the surgeons spent hours cleaning all the toxins out of my abdominal cavity. My mother still describes how the appendix looked when they showed it to her - punctured with several holes and looked withered and torn apart. That day I lived through my near death condition and survived. What this experience showed me is something that I haven’t forgotten. The diagnosis that a physician gives is not simply a conclusion, rather, it's a decision that carries the full weight of both human suffering and life. Medicine failed me that day at Tri-Star. All hope rests on the medical diagnosis, when it is wrong then all hope is truly lost. Clinical vigilance is not optional. It is the bare minimum. That is why the Appendix Project exists. Because my mother did not know what appendicitis was. Because she had no resources to turn to, no red flags to recognize, and no questions to ask. Because no patient should face a potentially fatal misdiagnosis without a fighting chance to recognize it. This platform exists to give patients that fighting chance.