I got admitted on Christmas Day for acute appendicitis and got sent to my room to wait on the surgery. First thing I noticed while lying on the bed was the dead flies on the light shields, so with a ruptured appendix I was standing up on the bed dumping out the dead flies from the lights, since I couldn’t stand the thought of staring up at those post-op. Good times!
I still have my appendix and so far as I know it has never ruptured but I have had two flareups of appendicitis, one while on the USS Saratoga at sea. In either case there was no way I would have noticed a dead fly if it had been up my nose! The pain was some of the most intense I have ever experienced and accompanied by throwing up huge volumes of liquid that left me wondering how I could even have that volume in my body to throw up. There was zero possibility that I could have have stood up on a bed and removed dead flies from anything, it would have been inconceivable. I had extreme soreness in my abdominal muscles for a week afterward from all the heaving and curling up in a ball.