Does It Hurt to Have Appendicitis?
Key takeaways:
Appendicitis is a medical emergency.
Symptoms of appendicitis include pain in the lower-right side of the abdomen, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and a low-grade fever.
Appendicitis pain is typically intense and debilitating.
Appendicitis is a painful medical emergency caused by inflammation in the appendix.
The appendix is a small, tube-shaped organ attached to the large intestine. It can get blocked by inflamed lymph nodes and stones. When this happens, bacteria inside the appendix multiply and cause inflammation and infection, creating acute appendicitis. Symptoms of appendicitis include nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, a low-grade fever and sharp pain in the lower-right abdomen.
Appendicitis may require emergency surgery (appendectomy) to remove the appendix. An appendectomy prevents the appendix from bursting and also stops the pain.
So how much does it hurt to have appendicitis? Below, read three people’s accounts of how appendicitis feels and what it’s like to recover from an appendectomy.
Quiz: Do I have appendicitis?
‘Hot and burning’ pain
Paul Padgett, a 70-year-old retired teacher living in Brookville, Indiana, had an appendicitis attack on April Fools’ Day in 2020. The day started out normally, with Paul fitting in a 30-mile bike ride. By early evening, however, he was doubled over from severe pain in his lower-right side. And he then had to drive himself to a local hospital 8 miles away.
“It was like somebody just stabbed me,” Paul says, describing the pain as “hot and burning.” “It was 8 miles of excruciating pain.”
The emergency department was crowded in the midst of the pandemic. But the staff checked him in right away. A doctor told Paul he had appendicitis and that his appendix needed to come out. About 30 minutes later, Paul was upstairs in a hospital room awaiting surgery while nurses hooked him up to a morphine IV.
Does appendicitis hurt more than childbirth? One woman says it does. Read how she and others describe the pain of appendicitis.
What can you eat after appendicitis surgery? Ready why experts recommend bland, clear liquids such as broth.
How do you know if your stomach pain is appendicitis? The main sign is dull pain that starts around the belly button.
“The pain subsided quite a bit because of the drugs,” Paul recalls. “But I broke out in chills in the middle of the night.”
The laparoscopic surgery the next morning didn’t take long. Two hours after the surgery began, Paul woke up in the recovery room. He stayed overnight at the hospital so that doctors could monitor his low blood pressure and possible dehydration after the procedure.
The next day, Paul, an avid cyclist who bikes 30 miles or more daily, asked a nurse if he could ride his bike again soon. The nurse gave him the go-ahead. “I don’t think they realize the kind of cycling that I do,” Paul says. “I think they thought I was just going to go around the neighborhood.”
He set off on his bike that day but quickly realized he was doing too much, too soon. He waited a few days and then started biking short distances. Gradually, he worked up to his usual routine.
Paul’s full recovery took about 2 weeks. The pain he experienced before he had surgery was the worst part of appendicitis, he says: “I’ve never experienced that kind of pain before. There’s no known use for the appendix. But you can really tell when it goes wrong.”
A pain scale of 9 out of 10
Appendicitis pain hit without warning in 2021 for Caroline Bacon, 67, who works in social services in Tacoma, Washington.
“I had staggeringly severe abdominal pain,” Caroline says. “I was doubled over in pain. I thought I was going to die.”
Caroline called a consulting nurse with her health insurance company, who told her to go to an urgent care clinic immediately. A friend drove Caroline to a medical center with an urgent care clinic. And when she got there, a triage nurse asked Caroline what her pain level was on a scale from 1 to 10.
“I told her it was a 9,” Caroline says.
The next afternoon, Caroline had a laparoscopic appendectomy at the facility’s surgery center. When she awoke, she still had some pain at the incision sites and some bloating from the procedure. But “the pain was nowhere near what it was before the surgery,” she says.
While her recovery went smoothly, Caroline says, she’ll never forget the intense pain from appendicitis.
“I think I probably have a higher pain tolerance than most people,” she says. “I almost never take pain meds. I’m an ‘I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow’ kind of person. But this time, the pain was more than I could handle.”
‘I couldn’t stand up’
Cindy Jackson, a 63-year-old freelance copywriter in Youngsville, North Carolina, woke up one morning in 2004 with abdominal pain so severe that she curled into a fetal position. Curled up on the sofa where she’d slept the night before, Cindy could barely move without feeling intense pain.
“I couldn’t stand up,” she says. “I’ve never been stabbed, but that’s what it felt like.”
Cindy banged a metal bowl on the hardwood floor to wake up her kids. Her son and daughter found her crying on the sofa and called 911. An ambulance took Cindy to the emergency department, where she was brought back immediately. But doctors couldn’t find the source of her pain from scans.
Cindy stayed in the hospital, waiting for an answer. Her pain persisted despite taking pain medications her doctor ordered. Five days passed with no diagnosis.
“At one point, I told my husband, ‘I think I’m going to die in here,’” Cindy recalls.
Finally, a doctor suspected her gallbladder was the cause. So Cindy went into surgery to have her gallbladder removed. But the procedure revealed the true cause of her pain, which turned out to be a life-threatening medical emergency: Cindy’s appendix had burst. She woke up 3 hours later in the recovery room.
“After I got back to my room, I still felt awful,” Cindy says, explaining that, at that point, she still needed surgery to remove debris. “I felt nauseous. They hadn’t removed all the stuff that had burst and was inside my body.”
A few days after her second surgery, the hospital discharged Cindy. Her entire hospital stay was 10 days. And it took her about a month to fully recover.
Cindy stresses the importance of seeking medical attention right away if you have intense abdominal pain and other symptoms such as nausea. “Go to the hospital,” she says. “Don’t let it go on for a day or two.”
Frequently asked questions
Appendix pain is constant and may be dull, sharp, or throbbing. It usually starts off around the belly button and then moves to the lower-right side of the abdomen, getting more intense over time. The pain may worsen with movement, coughing, or deep breathing. And people usually experience additional symptoms like nausea and an inability to eat or drink because of the pain.
In the early stages, some people may experience mild, tolerable pain that comes and goes. However, as appendicitis progresses and the appendix becomes more inflamed, the pain can become intense and unbearable. It’s important to seek help if you have abdominal pain that gets worse over time.
How quickly appendicitis pain progresses can vary from person to person. In some cases, the pain may start as mild discomfort around the navel and gradually worsen over a period of hours to days as the inflammation in the appendix increases. However, for others, the pain may escalate more rapidly, becoming severe within a short span of time.
The bottom line
Appendicitis is a medical emergency. If you have sharp pain in your lower-right abdomen, loss of appetite, a low-grade fever, and nausea or vomiting, seek medical attention right away. Waiting to see a doctor could result in a burst appendix, which is a life-threatening condition.
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