[reply]you should reserve judgment until you understand and know all the facts, which neither of us will ever do so lets speculate.

when i first heard about her ailment, i was sure she had appendicitis. the symptoms were classic. i don't believe any doctor that lisa bentley would take herself to would be that incompetent. quite possible that there was either not full disclosure from the patient or she elected not to have a scan. this scenario is equally as conceivable as a botched diagnosis. the more likely truth is they told her there was a problem but that she would not die from it in the next 24 hours if she started a course of antibiotics and she could in fact race if the pain was tolerable. she then took that advice and, well, ran with it.

for the record the concept of doing a pro-active removal of your appendix is down right asinine, even with the success rates and recovery times associated with current laproscopic procedures. your money would be better spent buying insurance that would come get you via helicopter in remote regions of the world and whisk you to safety should you ever require an emergency medical procedure.[/reply]

The british have treated appendicitis quite succesfully with antibiotics for years. Only the Americans (who get paid well to do so) take it out as the first choice. Antibiotics is an option for almost anyone with appendicitis. Surgery would have taken her out of the race for sure. I suspect she was given her choices and took her chances.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

[reply]From a friend who works in insurance defense litigation. Kona is a tiny medical community, and those who work in their defense know which doctors to avoid![/reply]

She was in waimea where there is a quite modern hospital. I went to the University of Hawaii medical school. Hawaii's medical doctors compare favorably to those anywhere.

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Frank,
An original Ironman and the Inventor of PowerCranks

 Monty, if you are so fucking smart why don't you just get a knife and some sutures and take your appendix out yourself? From what I hear you're thought of as "tough". /


WOW dude, did I kick your dog or something? Maybe you forgot the smiley face, it's like this (-:. This whole thread was just a question I had thought about, and because I'm not so smart, figured I get some of the doc's opinions.

Lots of good stuff here, was also wondering if the older you get without any problems, are you more likely to have/havenot problems with the appendix. Always seems like the cases I hear about are people under 50 yrs. old.....

The wife of a client of mine died in Tasmania from a ruptured appendix while out on some sort of backcountry trip. Try as they did, they could not get her to proper care in time. Not a funny thing, that.

My appendix merely exanded on me and I was doubled over wishing I was dead. It took a few liters of morhpine drips to get me to be able to lie down flat so that they could do the MRI and set up the surgery. I have four nasty scars on my abdomen because they had to keep cutting open new holes to get at it.

I can't believe Lisa dealt with that and still raced.

And rebound tenderness.

Wouldn't that vex a Darwinist. After all if it wasn't needed, it wouldn't have developed. Kind of like the ability for blood to clot. Course if it didn't clot, the animal would have died. So how did that happen? You develop blood, then develop the ability to clot, course you die if it doesn't clot, but clotting couldn't develop without blood.