Appendicitis Scare Hits Close to Home for ABC Medical Editor

July 23, 2009— -- A medical emergency hit close to home for ABC News medical editor Dr. Tim Johnson when his daughter was hospitalized recently with appendicitis and underwent emergency surgery.

Kiplee Johnson, a working mom, thought she had a simple stomach bug.

"I was at work; I was really feeling miserable," she said. "[I had] a lot of nausea and stomach pains that were sort of generalized, so I didn't really think much of it at the time."

Her father said, "She thought it was gas pains. And I said, 'Well, it could be the food you ate or it could be a virus, let's see what happens in the next 24 hours.' And that's how I first heard about it."

What was happening inside Kiplee Johnson was something of a ticking time bomb. By the next day, she knew it was serious enough to see her doctor.

"She was really pretty miserable," Dr. Megan Staton said.

Staton examined Johnson, who, by that point, was experiencing pain focused in her lower right side, and the doctor immediately suspected what was wrong. "She really looked like what we learned back in medical school -- this is the classic appendicitis patient," Staton said.

Appendicitis, an inflammation of the appendix, most often occurs in people between 10 and 30, according to the Mayo Clinic, but it can happen at any age. Kiplee Johnson is 37.

The treatment is always surgery but left untreated too long, the appendix can burst and spill infection into the abdominal cavity.

The situation can become very serious, very fast. There are more than 300,000 hospitalizations for appendicitis every year, according to the National Institutes of Health, and it is one of the most common causes of emergency surgery in the United States.

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