Appendix, bah, who needs 'em

I was in the middle of doing something that I hate doing... cleaning my room. I guess that's why no one believed me when I doubled over in pain. They figured I was faking just to get out of the task at hand. I wasn't faking.

Chubby Checker had just released "The Twist" about two weeks before and some believe that is what aggravated my appendix to become inflamed. My twisting days were over.

My hospital stay was actually fun. My friend and baseball mate Kurt Smalley was having his tonsils removed and we kept ourselves entertained by conducting wheelchair races up and down the halls of St. Francis in Tulsa.

I was laying in the hospital bed when all of a sudden the doctor and several nurses came rushing in gave me a shot of something and gathered me up and wheeled my straight in to the operating room.

I'm told that my appendix burst just as the surgeon made the incision. If they had waited any longer.......

That really screwed up my summer because I couldn't do anything that required physical strength. No baseball, no swimming and no twisting.