Bacon day is not the day you want to be sick. It's first come, first served and I was determined to get my share, but my stomach really hurt. I told Mom, but she thought I was trying to get out of school. So, when I was still complaining on Saturday, she rushed me to the emergency room.

Then, I had to stay in the stupid children's ward. Some little kid kept bugging me to play cards. Before my family left, Mom told Reese to hug me…and when he agreed to do it, it made me wonder if I was dying or something. Later, the doctor dragged in all these interns to stare at me and poke me. I felt like some sort of experiment. That night, it got worse. I mean, I'm not a baby, but it was just creepy being in there. Plus, there was this big scary male nurse named Helmut. Then some doctors came in and put my head in one of those metal halos thinking I needed brain surgery. They were ready to haul me off to drill into my head until they realized they had the wrong kid!

I tried to tell Mom the next day, but she said I was overreacting and didn't believe me. Then I found out that my family stayed up late playing games and even went to breakfast. Our family NEVER goes out to breakfast! After they left, the Krelboynes came to visit, which was cool. They tried to convince me that surgery was the best way to guilt things out of my parents. Maybe they had a point. Then again, my stomach didn't hurt anymore and I was starting to think I didn't need an operation at all.

When the doctor moved up my surgery time I begged him to do a new blood test, but he wouldn't. Helmut made me take sedatives, but I spit them in his face and made a run for it. An orderly agreed to give me my test results if I gave him a urine sample - something about a drug test. The test results proved I didn't need surgery. Just about then, Helmut caught me and dragged me off to surgery. Luckily, I wrote my test results on my abdomen, along with a note threatening to sue for malpractice.

But once I got home (with my appendix in tact) things didn't get better. The hospital bill was huge and everyone blamed me for blowing our vacation money with my "fake" injury. Maybe the hospital wasn't so bad after all.