It came on suddenly... this is acute appendicitis
Chronic appendicitis, the pain is vague and prolonged. Sometimes
you may even feel well, but over time, you will feel nauseous and
unwell (with fever and a distended abdomen) with localized pain
over your right upper groin region. On light touch or palpation,
you will feel a hard mass, its an abscess that has accumulated over
time because of continuing inflammation and nothing has been done
to it. Some may perforate before becoming abscess, whereas some
becomes abscess because the intiating cause is minor.
The symptoms can come all at once in 1 second, or over a few days.
6 months of illness is considered chronic, less than 1 month is
acute whereas in between we usually call it subacute.
Erm... there is really no known cause as to why it can happen, but
a very good hypothesis states that constipation is the number one
cause compounded by the factor that the patient does not eat fiber
(fruits, vegetables and juices). So what happens is that the feces
(sh.it) is hardened and it is tough to pass through the large
bowels, and they get impacted on the lumen (small hole) of the
appendix leading to stasis. This will eagerly attract bacteria to
colonize the area leading to inflammation.
Acute appendicitis favors the young mostly, adults don't really get
it probably because their lumen of the appendix is matured and
hence larger than that of the child.
The typical tale of don't run around after eating is not proven
yet. A good counter-discussion to this tale is that the food
remains in the stomach for up to 4 hours, the small intestine for
up to 6 hours, and only reaches the site of appendix after the 10
hours, so you shouldn't run around after 10 hours of eating... but
that again is not proven yet.
