Joey, I pray all is going well with your procedure today.  We&#39;ll be thinking about you.<br />
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Cheryl, thanks anyway for the music offer.  That was very kind of you to offer.  My mom is a country music fan and has some CDs I may borrow to rip a couple of tracks from.....Whoa, the lightbulb just went off in my head.  An MP3 player loaded with many of Mom&#39;s favorite songs as a Christmas gift.  Hmmmm, I may be on to something here.  Thanks for the inspiration.<br />
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Kareen, I hope your friend is better soon.  Abdominal pain is one of the most perplexing complaints a patient can present to a physician.  There are just so many structures in the abdomen which could be the origin of the pain.  The CBC test you mentioned would have only indicated an infectious process occurring somewhere in the body and would yeild a similar result for dicverticulitis, too.   As a nurse, I have seen patients with appendicitis present with everything from writhing around on the bed pain to a complaint of &quot;my stomach hurts a little&quot;.  If your friend was one who complained of &quot;a little&quot; pain, the doctor may not have immediately considered her appendix as the source for her pain.  On the flip side, I have seen patients who have had an &quot;emergency&quot; appendectomy only for the surgeon to get in there and discover the appendix was not inflamed and the surgery did not &quot;cure&quot; the pain. <br />
I know this doesn&#39;t help your friend now, but I did want to point out how there is no one definitive test her doctor could have run to rule out appendicitis.   Medicine isn&#39;t an exact science and as a patient if we feel our medical problem isn&#39;t being effectively managed, we need to speak up, as your friend did, and say we are not getting better.