Andi and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week by Andi Q. '25

Remember two weeks ago when I blogged about how excited I was for this semester? Well, in a dramatic turn of events, I suddenly became super sick and ended up having to undergo surgery a week after that blog post.

Not exactly the best way to start the semester…

But don’t worry – I’m back on my feet now! (Hooray for modern medicine!) Now allow me to tell you all about the experience.

(Now would also be a great time to click away if you’re squeamish about medical details.)

Yay storytime

It all started last Friday when I woke up with a sharp pain in my butt whenever I moved around, almost like being stabbed by a butter knife. I had no idea what caused it (and still have no idea), but I assumed it would disappear within a day and made my way to class.

Unfortunately, the pain did not magically disappear as I’d hoped. By Sunday morning, it had become severe enough that I decided to get it checked out at MIT Urgent Care. I was just a bit terrified because that was my first time going to MIT Urgent Care⁠01 I’d always avoided it because the US health system seemed so intimidating , but the experience was surprisingly frictionless. Until it was time for the diagnosis, that is.

The doctor took one look at me and diagnosed me with general butt pain⁠02 This isn’t the official medical term, but this is pretty much what I was told , telling me to just live with it for four to six weeks⁠03 Ouch... apparently that’s how long tailbone injuries take to heal . (Spoiler alert: it was not, in fact, general butt pain. It was actually an infected abscess⁠04 A pocket of pus that’s generally not super fun to have .) To be fair, he didn’t have a ton of information to work with… but I think it’s still a bit weird how he told me that I shouldn’t be going to Urgent Care for that type of problem.

Anyway, I tried my best to live with the pain for four to six weeks – I even went to all my classes on Tuesday⁠05 In hindsight, maybe not the best idea I’ve had at MIT – but it just kept getting worse until I couldn’t sleep at night. It was time for a second opinion. After dragging myself to MIT Urgent Care again on Wednesday, a second doctor finally diagnosed me with an infected abscess.

yay… :(

I was annoyed that the first doctor had misdiagnosed me, but I had a bigger problem to worry about. Because I had left the infection untreated for so long, I needed to go to the ER pretty urgently to get it treated. And so I made my way over to the Mount Auburn Hospital ER, where they prescribed me some antibiotics after a more thorough examination.

At that point, the pain had become the worst physical sensation I can remember experiencing. It was more like being stabbed by a red-hot poker iron now. Every. Single. Step. I. Took. I cried for the first time in five years. Totally not fun.

But things would only improve from then on! The antibiotics and painkillers worked wonders, and I was already feeling much better by Friday morning. (Still in intense pain and unable to attend lectures, mind you, but well enough to sleep at night at least.)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t rely solely on the antibiotics. Because I had an abscess (as opposed to a regular infection), I needed surgery to drain it at some point. And so I decided to go to MGH⁠06 The big hospital in Boston that evening to get it drained. (Mostly because MIT made it clear that I needed to return to lectures the following week.)

MGH was incredible. Everyone there was super nice and efficient, and the medical technology was straight out of science fiction⁠07 Everything was interconnected and just worked! And I am still alive, which I think is quite amazing too . My stay lasted less than 24 hours, and the surgeon who operated on me was the head of MGH Pediatric Surgery⁠08 Fun fact: he speaks Portuguese! It was really sweet hearing him talk with a little boy in a neighboring room who only knew Portuguese and likely one of the best surgeons in the world.

And just like that, all the pain was gone! The change was unbelievable. I even had the strength to walk all the way back to MIT… which I indeed ended up doing because the Red Line⁠09 The subway line joining MIT and MGH had broken down when I came out of the hospital.

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So yeah, that’s the story of my worst week ever at MIT. Luckily, it was not all pain and suffering – I learned many valuable lessons, and if this ever happens again (which I hope it will not), I will be slightly more prepared.

Modern medicine is a marvel of science and engineering

At the start of the semester, I believed that the semiconductor industry was the crown jewel of humanity’s science and engineering achievements. I still believe that, but modern medicine is definitely up there too now.

Before my visit to MGH, I never knew medical technology was so advanced. The entire hospital was an interconnected web of smart medical devices that operated together like clockwork. Everything just kind of… worked. (Which was honestly very surprising, coming from an EECS student taking classes about how computer systems fail all the time because we’re not very good at designing them.)

I also read through the list of Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology to keep myself occupied while waiting. It’s pretty wild how we went from lobotomies to mRNA vaccines within a century.

Don’t underestimate the power of music

In MITWE⁠10 The MIT Wind Ensemble , Fred Harris would often talk about the therapeutic effects of music. And he’s so right. Listening to music was one of the few things I could do to distract myself from the pain, and I was amazed by its effectiveness.

TL;DR: music good. Listen to more music. (And if you’re at MIT and reading this, you should come to our April 20th concert⁠11 Professor Kirk Kolenbrander (former vice president of MIT) will also be there playing the trombone! .)

It’s okay to take the elevator

I’m a big fan of taking the stairs instead of the elevator – so much so that I used to pester my friends into taking the stairs around campus with me and get slightly annoyed when I saw people taking the elevator down a single flight. It sounds quite silly saying this, but now I realize that taking the elevator is okay (even for very short trips) because sometimes it really is better than taking the stairs.

MIT’s policies don’t care if you’re sick

In many ways, I was incredibly fortunate in the timing of my illness. I got sick on a long weekend, so I had quite a long time to rest and recover. It was also an “off” week academically (my classes release new labs/psets biweekly), so I wasn’t pressed for any new deadlines either. I drained the abscess on a weekend too, which allowed me to attend all my lectures this week.

But even with all this padding, I still felt a lot of pressure from MIT to just get over my illness and go back to classes. Many classes have attendance policies that significantly affect grades, and many of those policies do not allow excused absences because “there’d be no way to judge one excuse over another”⁠12 I personally think there’s a pretty clear difference between missing lecture because you didn’t feel like it and missing lecture because you were in the hospital. But I’m just an undergrad, so what do I know . It’s also sometimes difficult to get homework extensions or makeup exams (especially in big classes), and some professors even suggest dropping classes entirely because of these types of conflicts.

It sucks, but that’s just how things are here.

But the people at MIT do

Fortunately, class policies at MIT often sound much harsher than they are in practice. I ended up not getting penalized for missing lectures that week because I explained the situation to my professors, who were generally quite understanding.

Even beyond professors, people at MIT generally care about the well-being of their peers. My friends were also extremely helpful, and they would bring me food and notes from the lectures I missed.

Healthy habits pay off

Another big reason why I escaped that week relatively unscathed (academically, at least) was my study habits. I always try to start new assignments as soon as they get released. For some reason, many people at MIT (including a few of my professors) think this habit is strange and counterproductive.

“If you have two weeks to do something, what’s the point of doing it all in the first three days?”

But because of my habit, I could take the entire week off and recover from my illness instead of scrambling for extensions. So pro tip – start your assignments early at MIT. Even if your economics class dedicates an entire pset to why you should not.

Listen to your body

(Jokes aside, do listen to your body. Even though the doctor diagnosed me with general butt pain, my body was telling me that it was clearly not general butt pain, and my body was correct.)

Health comes first

Yeah. (You were right, mom. Getting sick really does suck.)

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To end on a positive note, I got to go to a professor’s house for a research group party the day after I got out of the hospital. And he has two beautiful cats! Meet Freckle and Blossom: