Mike Swafford's Blog

Favorite part of the weekend at Trina’s class reunion. Seeing Kathy Nance Dietz  for the first time after her brain tumor. In front of all her classmates that don’t know me who didn’t know how well she has recovered, I walked up to her and yelled “Kathy. Kathy!! It’s me Mike. Do you recognize me Kathy??” She started feeling around on my face. Love joking around with her!

APPENDIX

I was a senior in high school and had been working at the radio station for a couple of years and was doing mornings at that point.  So I happened to be home with mom and dad one evening and whatever it was that mom fixed for dinner I didn’t eat.  The reason I know that is because later when I mentioned that I didn’t feel good, mom said it was probably because I didn’t eat dinner.  After we all went to bed I started feeling worse and ended up throwing up in the bathroom.  I was hurting and half out of it as I crawled across the house to get to the living room outside of mom and dad’s bedroom.  I was moaning from the pain but didn’t want to bother them until it became too much.  I managed to softly call out for mom.  Then a little louder.  That’s when my father who I didn’t think ever awoke from sleep in the night answered “What do you want?”  Well, I wanted my mom because I was in pain.  I didn’t want to wake my dad and explain that I wanted my mom.  I said “I hurt”.  The replay was “What do you mean you hurt?”  So after a little back and forth they came in and checked on me and started talking softly to each other and I hear them say “emergency room”.  I almost delirious at this point but remember that I did not want to go to the hospital so I told them I was fine.  “I’ll be ok just let me lay here”.  I now realize how concerned they must have been since they had lost a daughter who was only months old because of a ruptured appendix that had been misdiagnosed as my mom being over reactive.  That happened a couple of years before I was born.

They took me to the E.R. where I remember trying to make sure that someone would call about covering the morning show.  I also remember that I was growing a beard and they came in to shave my stomach to prep for my surgery.  It was an old nurse that my mom and dad knew.  He asked her if she could shave my face while she was at it.  Then she proceeded to shave my privates with a straight razor.  I was mortified.  I had no idea that was part of the process.

One of the funniest things after the surgery was the guy who was sharing the room with me.  He was an old man that was married to a nurse at the hospital.  My parents knew them of course.  The guy was forgetful.  Back then an appendectomy was more of a surgery than it is today.  I had stitches and held a pillow next to my stomach to keep it from hurting and the last thing I wanted to do was cough, sneeze or laugh.  They had just been in to remind me of that while I was talking to my girlfriend at the time Mary.  Her and I stopped our conversation when the guy sharing my room got a phone call.  We heard him talk softly for a moment and then a couple of minutes later his wife the nurse walked in.  She asked him who was on the phone.  He looked at her surprised and looked over to see he had the phone in his hand.  He looked at her again.  He looked at the phone again.  He looked at her and put the phone up to his ear and said, “Hello?”  “Hello?”  Then he told her there was nobody there and he couldn’t remember who called.  Now that may not seem very funny but when you aren’t supposed to laugh and you see the look on their faces and you turn to see Mary laughing her ass off, you start to laugh and hurt and hold the pillow to your stomach.

The scar is still there but instead of being next to my belly button its about six inches lower folder under some skin below my waist.