Appendix explosion

Jaya Flanary, Features Editor
Originally published January 25, 2015

“Twenty four more hours of just hanging out at home and I would have been dead,” senior Hawk Ticehurst said.

Ticehurst was eight years old when he first began having stomach problems. The doctors found nothing wrong, but after two weeks of “excruciating pain” and a night spent in the bathroom puking, he returned to the hospital.

Ticehurst’s appendix had exploded. Doctors had missed it two weeks prior because his appendix was located in an abnormal place: under the rib cage.

He had to have surgery immediately. “Usually they do like an incision on the side where the appendix is just to take it out,” Ticehurst said. “But since it had exploded they had to do like a whole clean up crew kind of deal.”

Ticehurst isn’t self conscious about the vertical scar beneath his abdominal hair.

“It’s just part of me,” he said. “I just pass over it, I don’t think about it anymore unless I’m asked about it.”