I loved fishing, hiking, caving, canyoning, canoeing, kayaking and mountain hiking, and spent most of my youth doing those activities. One time, my friend Jim and I had gone to Gooseneck Lake to camp for a few days, and we were both 11. My dad drove us up in the morning and helped us set up our camp before he took off. We spent the day fishing and hiking about. We found a bunch of old railroad ties that we carried back to camp. We set them around the fire 4 high and used a couple more for seats. This was pretty cool; it was much warmer inside this windbreak.
As evening was setting in, our thoughts turned to supper. It consisted of beans, corn, and trout, cooked on the fire in our improvised outdoor kitchen. A bit after dinner, I started to feel sick with nausea and had a bad pain in my tummy. Then I began to vomit. I told Jimmy that I needed to go to town. It was just getting towards dusk. There happened to be a man fishing at the lake, and we caught him just as he was ready to drive out. I asked if he could take us into town, and he agreed to give us a ride.
We left the gear there, thinking maybe we would be back out tomorrow. The man took us home, and I am always so grateful for that ride. Later that night, as I was lying in my bed, sometime around 3 a.m., I started to hurt really badly. My mom and dad came into my room to see what I was moaning about. My dad pushed on my tummy slowly, then released the pressure quickly. The pain was agonizing, but my dad knew what it was and rushed me to the hospital. Our family physician, Dr. Margetts, was on call when we got there. He took one look at me and immediately told the nurses to get me ready to be operated on. I did not quite make it into the O.R. before my appendix ruptured and filled my gut with poison. The doctor removed this organ, patched me up, and I spent the next 2 weeks in the hospital. There was a rubber hose sticking out of my belly. Every day, they would pull that tube out an inch or two. Awful shit would leak out from the end, and this smelled pretty bad.
If we had stayed out camping, I would have died with Jimmy looking on, helpless to do anything.
Jim and his mom, went out to retrieve our gear the next day. For some reason, they lost my tent. This was not a big deal; we had others. The funny thing, though, is that in 2021. Jims mom and I reconnected in a grocery store lineup. She informed me that she had found that tent again shortly after she lost it and had kept it for 55 years, waiting to see me again. She gave me the tent. It was funny to see that old tent again. One day, I will write a full story about this tent.
This was not my first bout with my appendix, though. Last year, when I was 10, my parents sent my sister and me to a summer camp in Nanoose Bay. It was a church group that ran this camp. A few days into the 2 weeks I was to be there, I woke in the middle of the night, with a bad ache in my tummy and began to vomit on the floor. The camp head guy was summoned, and he said he would take me to Nanaimo, to the hospital emergency ward, but only after I cleaned up my mess. So there I was, on my knees, at 3 a.m., wiping up vomit, feeling really sick and in pain. After the mess was gone, off we went. He made sure I knew how mad he was for getting him up in the middle of the night as we drove to the hospital. When we arrived, they took one look at me and admitted me right away, with acute appendicitis.
My parents were called, and after they arrived in the early morning, I told Mom how I was treated by the camp leader. On our way home, she had Dad stop at the camp. She gathered up our stuff, collected my twin sister and then went into the office to chat with the head guy. When my mom was mad, she was a formidable force, and I am sure that he knew how mad she was. She was in there for quite some time and was pretty red in the face with anger when she came out. My understanding is that they said they would fire the head guy and refund Mom all the fees my parents paid. Never went to summer camp again. This suited me fine.