A 3 a.m. Decision

The Story

Stina is 26, halfway through a graduate program, running on coffee and deadlines. At 3 a.m. a stabbing pain low on the right side of her belly wakes her up. She is hot to the touch. Her feet, her knees, and her skins are bright red, swollen, and painful enough to wake her from sleep. Her roommate drives her to the ER.

The picture is textbook: pain in the right lower belly, fever, a tender abdomen that guards when pressed. The team is thinking one thing – appendicitis – and they move fast. Within hours Stina is in surgery and her appendixA small, finger-like pouch attached to the cecum, thought to play a role in immune function. is removed. The appendix comes back normal. No infection, nothing wrong with it. The pain fades over a few days, everyone calls it a near miss, and Stina goes back to her thesis. Weeks later, the same pain returns. If it wasn’t her appendix, what was it? That question runs the rest of this module – and the rest of the course.