Incredibly, it turned out that Alex did have appendicitis and had surgery last night. It went very well and he was quite chipper just a couple of hours later.
Technology is remarkable and the operation was all done using lathroscopic surgery so it is not nearly as invasive and involved only three very tiny incisions. Quite cool really.
The surgeons declined my offer to assist during the surgery. And I wasn't even going to charge them.
Alex and I thought it would be neat to keep the appendix so we could show it to Nicky and then maybe dry it and make a Christmas tree ornament out of it. No one else seemed to find this particularly funny and we were unable to obtain the tissue.
After a lot of pain and discomfort Friday night and most of Saturday, Alex has been mostly okay today. We are hopeful, but not certain, of getting out tomorrow. He has been getting morphine for the pain from the appendix and so we need to manage the withdrawal of that very carefully.
Appendicitis is not related to the leukemia. Just another stroke of bad luck. Fortunately (he said, grasping for positives) it happened when his neutrophil and platelet counts were very strong, it could have been a little tricky otherwise.
