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.

Dr. Tim Johnson: 'I Got Very Nervous'

"'You have to go straight to the hospital,'" Staton recalled telling Kiplee Johnson. "You can't go home and pick anything up. ... You need to go now, and you need to see the surgeons as soon as you get there."

She said, "I was like, 'Oh, this could be serious.' It was a little scary."

Johnson was rushed to Maine Medical Center in Portland and surgeon Dr. Virginia Eddy. "She looked like she was hurting," Eddy said. "She'd been having pain for a good couple of days."

The scans showed the worst -- Johnson's appendix had ruptured and she had a serious infection, which made operating that much more difficult.

"It was a lot like diffusing a bomb to get that out without ripping anything," Eddy said.

Her father found himself going from medical expert to worried dad.

"That happened to be the day that Tom Daschle was here for a visit and I was interviewing him around noon," he said of the former U.S. senator from South Dakota. "I got a call saying that they got in there and saw that there was a royal mess and her large bowel was involved and they were going to have to convert to an open abdominal operation. At which point I got very nervous, of course."

Eddy said, "We had to take out the first part of the intestine and then reconnect her intestines together. So it was a much bigger operation than we would normally do for simple appendicitis."

Kiplee's father took notice. "I mean, that immediately changed my level of anxiety from a two to a 10 because I know that is a major surgery," he said. "A lot can go wrong, reattaching the bowel is a tricky procedure."

With Appendix, Better Safe Than Sorry

The operation took four hours: four times as long as a regular appendectomy.

A week later, Johnson was able to go home to begin the difficult process of recuperating.

"I wasn't able to even pick up my baby," she said. "That was really difficult, to not be able to, you know, lift him and just help him get dressed and do the things that I normally do."

Several weeks later, Johnson was doing well and her baby boy, Watts, was back in her arms.

For Johnson, it was a lesson in "better safe than sorry."

"I regret not going to see a doctor sooner," she said. "It's just safer to get checked out when in doubt, you know."

More Information About Appendicitis:

Causes:

There is no clear cause of appendicitis. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites can be agents responsible for an infection that leads to swelling of the tissues of the appendix wall.

Symptoms:

Nausea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain on lower right side.

Even if you do not have the classic symptoms, abdominal pain that comes on suddenly and does not go away within a few hours warrants a medical investigation.

Treatment:

The only treatment is surgery. If caught early, the appendix can be removed laparoscopically (which is less invasive and has shorter recovery time). If it ruptures and there are complications, then a full open abdominal surgery is required.

Diagnosis:

Blood work to determine if there is an elevated white blood cell count.

Sonogram and/or CT scan to see if the area is inflamed.

A urine test for appendicitis might be possible one day. Researchers have found a protein detectable in urine that might serve as a "biomarker" for appendicitis.

For More Information:

The Mayo Clinic: http://mayoclinic.com/health/appendicitis/DS00274

The National Institutes of Health: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/appendicitis.html