Hi, Amber and the rest of the family:
I had a nice long chat with Gavin yesterday, at which point he was about 40 hours out of surgery for his ruptured appendix. The concern with this type of operation is whether any infection sets in within the first 48 hours, and
he appeared to be getting through that successfully. He said he didn't really have any pain, considering that when the rupture happened, it was the worst pain he's ever experienced.
His complaints were that he had so many tubes hooked up to him, and he was especially looking forward to having his catheter removed in about two hours (the time of my call was about 5 pm our time yesterday, Feb 2. Also he hadn't had any solid food for two and a half days, just getting fed by IV, which was keeping him hydrated.
Gavin's host mom and dad were in Hawaii when he first started having trouble. In fact, the night before this happened, they were having dinner with my old Philadelphia House roommate, Ron Sanderson and his Japanese wife Yoko (this is the couple Gavin has been rooming and boarding with for the last two years while attending the University of Hawaii). When they got back to Japan, they immediately took Gavin to the hospital. He had gone earlier, but had been sent home with stomach flu medicine-maybe there was a bit of a language barrier, since Gavin's Japanese vocabulary hasn't had to deal with medical and anatomical terms. His host mom and the exchange program director stayed with him during the surgery, and his host mom was still with him while I talked to Gavin.
He's been dealing with some of the cultural differences in a Japanese hospital. Apparently, Japanese patients are not supposed to grill their doctors about what they're doing, whereas Americans are used to having everything explained to them. Gavin doesn't like this aspect at all, given his prior experience with having his ACL rupture in his knee repaired.
Another difference is that Gavin will be hospitalized for a good week, whereas, over here an appendectomy patient is released fairly quickly. Part of the problem is that Gavin received a 3 ½ inch incision instead of two little laproscopic holes as is normal here. I don't know if they don't have laproscopic technology in Japan, or if they had to cut into him because of the rupture. Gavin says his appendix had just barely burst, and the area of infection was small.
Something that is kind of ironic is the fact that Marcos, the kid from Brazil that Gavin and his Mom hosted during Gavin's senior year at Taft High, also suffered an appendicitis attack while being an exchange student. His happened while he was flying back home to Brazil, and he had to suffer for quite a ways on that long flight.
Gavin's classes in Konan University were out for a week, starting back up next Tuesday. He probably won't be able to get back until the following Thursday, so he's going to have lots of time on his hands.
If you want to talk to him, he would probably really appreciate it. You can use sendglobal.com where you can buy some time. The site is designed for use by cell phone.
Cost is 7cents a minute for Japan. You dial the number that connects you to sendglobal, you hear the minutes you have on your account, and then you dial Gavin's cell phone number which is:
011-81-90-8385-8199 (011 starts an international call and 81 is the country code)
You can check what time it is in Japan on this site http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
So that's all the news I have. I'll keep you posted when I hear more.
Love all,
Steve