When Trusting Authority Almost Killed Me

When I was 19 I had appendicitis. Only nobody believed me.

It was my first semester in college, my first time living away from home. My solution to homesickness was to keep myself crazy busy with classwork, activities and volunteering. I was busy but it felt good. It was on my way back to school from Thanksgiving break that I started to feel… not great. Specifically I felt like I had the worst food poisoning of my life, complete with cramping and being doubled over in the community bathroom.

After a couple of days of misery I started to realize that maybe this was something more than food poisoning. Specifically, thanks to some WebMD sleuthing, it might be appendicitis (well, that or the ebola, WebMD is very comprehensive).

So off I trucked to the hospital, which luckily was right across the street from my dorm. After a couple hours of waiting (and retching into a KFC bucket- classy), I finally got to see a doctor who swiftly examined me, announced that it was not appendicitis but a stomach flu, shot me up with some vicodine and sent my, now quite high and dazed, self home.

Only he was wrong. I knew it. I couldn’t articulate it while pumped full of painkillers but I knew this wasn’t like any stomach flu I’d ever experienced. When I woke up the next morning, my stomach radiating with pain, I was certain it must be appendicitis. It was 6 AM and I jostled my roommate awake, “hey- I think there’s something really wrong with me. I think it’s my appendix.”

“You’re fine, go back to sleep,” she mumbled before rolling over. The 911 operator was equally unhelpful, “what do you want me to do about it?” she actually asked (great job Atlanta emergency services by the way).

Guess it was up to me then. Even though I’d been there not even 12 hours before, I hobbled back to the ER. It was still dark and I had to stop and rest a couple of times from the pain. I think the same nurse was still working the front desk. After about 6 hours of waiting, the doctors admitted that yes, I probably did have appendicitis. I went into surgery that evening and instead of taking my finals spent the next week or so hopped up on morphine.

What does this have to do with travel?

I get a lot of emails from readers, which I LOVE. Sometimes they are telling me stories and sometimes they are looking for advice. A common theme that comes up a lot is people who really want to go travel but someone is holding them back: it might be a parent, advisor, friend or a boyfriend. It might even be society in general which tends to discourage anyone who decides to do things a little differently.

We like to believe that our closest advisors: our parents, teachers and friends, know what’s best for us. But that’s not always true. Of course it’s good to seek other people’s input on your decisions, but ultimately what you are doing with your life, your happiness, is your responsibility and your decision.

Other people judge your choices through their own experiences and framework. That doctor sent me home because my symptoms didn’t match his experiences with appendicitis. Similarly your parents might not get your desire to travel because it doesn’t match up with their traditional ideas about career and life. That doesn’t make it wrong (doesn’t make it right either), it just makes it different.

I had no reason to doubt that this doctor was an expert at what was wrong with me. I mean, I’m not a doctor, I was freaking English major. Still, on some level I knew what was up with my body- I knew better than anyone else. And you know what’s best for you too, deep down, if you think about it.

This doctor later wrote me an email apologizing for his mistake. I wasn’t upset though. It had all worked out, and it was an important lesson to learn at 19: that I have to be my biggest advocate. In the end, the only one who gets to dictate my choices, and the only one who has to answer for them, is me.

In the end being a grown up is about finding your own inner voice and compass. About making the decisions that are smart for you.