I apologize in advance but this is a very long read.

As many of you know I normally go on an out of state turkey hunting trip on a yearly basis. Although it is a lot of work and traveling, I consider it a treat to myself for chasing hard headed Eastern’s all season in Alabama. I was particularly excited about this season because my wife decided she wanted to go with us this year, and my travel partner Bowhunter84’s wife was going to accompany us as well. My wife has been years ago but injured her back and didn’t get to do much hunting or sightseeing and she pretty much had a miserable trip so I was looking forward to sharing that with the ladies and getting them a Nebraska merriam or hybrid….. whichever one presented a shot to either of them. Long story short the trip was a success and BH84 and I both tagged out with some stud birds and both ladies got their birds after we drug them along on 3 mile physically demanding walks. I was proud of both of them for handling the physical activity of those hills and creeks and getting their longbeards. It was no doubt a successful trip even it if was a little tougher than normal and we dealt with a lot of frustration during the week. Now I’m going to get to the point of this story. We were going to leave on Fri mid-morning and decided to ride around and look at wildlife for a couple hours and come back and load the truck up for the ride home. We went out and rode around and took our last pictures of mule deer, whitetails, and turkeys and decided to call it and head back to town.


All week long I had been having minor stomach issues. One of the things we look forward to in regards to the Nebraska trip is buying beef up there and grilling cheeseburgers. It’s not like buying beef here from a box store, it’s vacuum sealed and in it’s original form with no dyes or preservatives. It is so good and if you have never had it, you are missing out. We had bought some earlier in the week and had delicious cheeseburgers for dinner but both times I got sick and one time it was all I could do not to throw up. I knew it wasn’t the meat because three other people ate it and was fine. We changed the menu to chicken dishes over the next few days and I didn’t have any problems. Thursday afternoon we had fried up a batch of chicken and some pheasant that the farmer had given us from last fall. We fried it all up and the pheasant was so tough it was inedible but the chicken was on point. We had one or two pieces left over in the fridge after dinner. After we returned Friday morning from riding around we loaded up the truck and started cleaning out the fridge. Instead of throwing away the wing and drumstick from the previous nights dinner, I decided to eat it since I love me some cold fried chicken with a little hot sauce. I ate the wing but when I bit into the drumstick after swallowing the first bite I noticed there was some pink on the bone indicating that it wasn’t fully done so I pitched it in the garbage and continued loading the truck with BH84.


After loading everything on the truck I went across the street to the quick mart to get some ice to pack on the turkey meat we were bringing home and they had some iced Yoohoo’s by the register. I thought “Man I haven’t had a YooHoo in forever”, so I got me one and drank it while walking back to the truck. I got in and we pointed the truck Southeast and took off on the long ride home. BH84’s wife wanted to take first shift of driving because she dislikes driving at night, so she got in the captains chair and BH84 got in the co pilot seat, and I got in the back seat with my wife. As we were leaving town that’s when the first twinge of pain hit me which was a minor abdominal cramp. It just felt like my stomach was being squeezed. We traveled about a couple hours through small town Nebraska and Kansas before hitting I- 70. I was getting these cramps every 10 minutes or so but it wasn’t too bad and I just put my head in my wife’s lap and just endured it. We stopped in Kansas City to grab a bite to eat and do some shopping in Cabelas. About halfway through the Cabelas stop the pains started hitting me hard and I would double over. Eventually I had to just walk out of the store and sit in the front on the benches and breathe in fresh air. This is where thoughts of food poisoning from the piece of undercooked chicken started entering my head. We all met back up and got a not so quick bite to eat at a local restaurant who messed up our orders so many times, and after that the cramps started hurting…… bad.

BH84 took over driving at that point and I got in the co pilot seat, and the ladies were in the back. We continued down I-70 towards St Louis and every few minutes I was doubling over in pain but doing it quietly. After quite a while the muscles under my rib cage were so sore and hurting from clenching up that it felt like I was being kicked in the ribs. BH84 drove almost to St Louis and had asked me several times if I needed to find a hospital and I kept declining. At this point everyone in the truck knew something was wrong and talks of appendix was dominating the conversation. In my mind though that fried chicken was the culprit. As we were entering St. Louis BH84 stopped and said he couldn’t go any further he was exhausted. He tried to get his wife to take a second shift of driving but I told him I was fine to drive and he reluctantly handed over the wheel. My wife was very concerned at this point and got up front with me and would not go to sleep. I drove from just West of St. Louis through Illinois and Kentucky and finally into Tennessee and it felt like someone was plunging a bowie knife into my right side every few minutes and twisting it around. About 60 miles north of Nashville I finally pulled over and gave up the wheel. As I got out of the truck I nearly fell I was hurting so bad. My angel of a wife took over driving at that point and I got in the passenger seat and prepared to suffer for several hours.


At this point I was sick and knew something was bad wrong with me. I would lay in the front seat and double over grunting in severe pain that would take my breath away. I took some Tylenol which helped it a little and I drifted off to sleep for an hour or so until one of the sharp pains woke me up close to the Alabama line. I woke up pouring sweat and I felt horrible… my sides felt like they had been beaten with a wiffle ball bat and I was still having the abdominal cramps. We crossed into Alabama and I knew I was in trouble. My wife was traveling as fast as she could go and we got around Decatur and drove into the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. It was raining so hard you could barely see the road so she of course had to slow down. Then just south of Cullman the interstate flow came to a screeching halt. There was a wreck and some young lady had lost her life in it. We sat in that traffic snarl for over two hours and I was moaning and carrying on like I was dying. We finally got around it and made the last hour to the house. Once we got home we quickly unloaded all my gear and clothes and BH84 and his wife took off heading home. At this point I could barely walk and was exhausted from the 20 hour pain filled drive home and I told my wife I had to sleep. She helped me up the stairs and I got into bed in some of the worst pain I have ever experienced and somehow I dozed off around 8 am Sat morning. I woke up two hours later because I was shivering so bad I was shaking the bed. I was so cold that my teeth were chattering and I thought I was going to break them. My wife who had not been asleep since Fri morning jumped up and went and got a thermometer. When she pulled it out of my mouth her eyes got big and she said “No arguments…. we’re going to the emergency room”. I got up and glanced at the digital readout on the thermometer and it read 104.1! I stumbled into the bathroom and took a quick shower and off to St Vincents East we headed.


I figured we would be in the waiting room for hours but as soon as we got there the lady at the front desk said “Mr. Carroll you look a little green around the gills, let me take your temp”. The next thing I knew I was being rushed to a room and IV’s were being jammed into my arms and I was being hooked up to all kinds of machinery. Shortly after I got put into a room a doctor arrived and started pushing on my side and I recoiled in pain. He asked me if I had any idea what was ailing me and I told him I thought it was possibly my appendix just going on the conversation I had with my travel partners on the way home. He told me, “Do you know what organ is right there were I just pushed? I think you have a gall bladder issue based on where the pain and tenderness is located”. First I got an X Ray which didn’t show a whole lot. A little while later they wheeled me down and did a sonogram test (the one they do for pregnant women to monitor the baby), and that didn’t show anything. Later on that afternoon they finally wheeled me down to the CT lab to do a CT scan. After they were done I was wheeled back to my room and it wasn’t 10 minutes later the doctor came in and said “I have good news, it’s not your gall bladder”. I said “What’s the bad news, it has to be something?” He smiled and said “You’re appendix is perforated and is spilling bacteria into your abdominal cavity so we have to take it. There will be a surgeon in here in the morning to take it out.

I was in so much pain I could barely breathe and I sat on that hospital bed all night watching the clock. I tried not to move because every time I stirred my wife who I know had not slept in three days would jump up and ask me what’s wrong. I laid in that bed watching that clock for 8 agonizing hours and finally about 6 am Sunday morning the wheels started in motion. The surgeon visited me and told me what all was going to happen. Shortly after that two nurses came to my room and wheeled me to surgery. The first person I encountered was the anesthesiologist. He told me they would put a general anesthetic in my IV and they would come by and give me a pill and I would go to sleep. It was a lie and they tell you that so people don’t freak out. They pushed that into my IV and that’s the last thing I remember pre surgery.

Here’s where the story gets kind of weird. You ever seen those videos where people wake up from surgery and talk incoherently and rant about weird things? Well apparently when BC wakes up he goes full rage monster on some folks. I came to from the surgery but I couldn’t see, it was like the whole world was black. I could hear a lady screaming “Mr. Carroll stop” over and over. Apparently the nurse on the floor tried to adjust the sheet on my bed and when she got close enough I grabbed her by the hair with my right hand and started swinging at her with my left. The other nurse threw a sheet over my fist as I was swinging and they said I never connected and she was able to stop my punches by pulling on the sheet as I was trying to hit this poor lady. I woke up and realized what I was doing and let go of everyone and I started apologizing over and over. Then I passed out again.

I woke up several hours later in my room with my wife holding my hand. I still had severe pain in my side and the surgeon had put a drain tube in for the infection that had spilled into my abdominal cavity to drain out. I felt like pure hell but I could tell that the problem on the inside was gone. I sat in the hospital two more days in some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced while they pumped bag after bag of antibiotics into me, while making me get up and walk up and down the halls every hour and a half or so. I finally got to come home on Tuesday afternoon. My poor wife probably didn’t get 5 hours of sleep in 5 days and never left my hospital room from the time I got there until the time I left. The doctor told her I was very lucky because I was probably less than 6 hours from that being really life threatening.


And you know what.......... I can’t wait to go back next year!