Can one be born without an appendix

My question is:  Can you be born without an appendix or live through a ruptured appendix?

I became ill in March 06, with vomiting/cramping/diarrhea

[yoshi]

I dont know if there is anyone born without an appendix,but it serves no purpose in our body/
My brother when he was a kid had ruptured appendix and it inflamed the cavity linings,it is fatal so i would think if it were disolved/ruptured,you wont be here typing away!
After he had his ,I started to have uneasy feeling where my appendix was so I went to see a doctor and they took my blood test which showed white blood cell counts too high.They called me into the hospital and removed my appendix.
then my other brother and my mother started feeling funny around that area but soon their funny feeling went away,which makes me wonder if it is somthing like a virus which caused so many of us sick?
If you white blood cell counts is too high,it indicates your body is fighting an infection.

[Idab]

Thank you for your note, I really am worried now - due to the lack of replies - beginning to believe my GI specialist may have been right.  However, if only he could have said it was some sort of a viral/bacterial attack I was going through.  The symptoms were so severe that I thought I would not make it through each attack.  Today I am holding out - get nauseous, lots of muscle pain in my legs, the usual crushing chest pains, but no crapming in my gut and that is all that matters.  Had so many tests and still my file lays on the GI's desk as he can not give me an answer.  Hells bells, after reading this site - surely he could at least have put it to one, if not two of the most common GI disorders?? Sometimes, I wonder if it was not all in my head??  But I am having a hard time keeping the thought there.

[Elliander]

I was born without an Appendix. I found out when I was really little.

My understanding is that the Appendix functions to break down certain kinds of food, like raw meat, which was at one time useful, but not so much anymore. In fact, if food it can't digest get's trapped inside it can easily inflame and cause a whole mess of problems.

While I don't know anyone personally who had an Appendix removed, I can say from experience that you can live just fine without one.

But then again, seeing as how I never had one to begin with, I don't know if I might have been better off with one. Just like you, having never had an appendix removed, don't know what it's like to be without.

Nor do I know anything about the surgury they perform to remove it, since I never had any kind of surgury... well... never any invasive surgury. I stuck a key in the outlet - twice - when I was little and had to get burn treatment. There was also the time a door slammed in my thumb and when the swelling came down my finger nail came out and they put in what I guess was a prosthetic finger nail which came out on it's own when my own grew back about a month later... but back on point, since I was never under the knife, I can't really say if there is something different about never having one and being born without.

When in doubt, get a second opinion.

[aslan4344]

Hi,
I read about the problems you are/were having from your post "can one be born without an appendix?".
I am now 29, but when I was much younger, about 13, I had similar attacks at about the same intervals as you mention. Mine were severe, nausea, diahrea, followed by cramping so intense I couldn't walk. This would go one over a several days and would happen about once a month or every month and a half. The docs and surgeons did a lot of tests, not sure exactly what was involved having been so young, but eventually they performed exploratory surgery and found that I had an absess (abscess) surrounding my appendix the size of a baseball. They put me in intensive care and drained the absess (abscess). They took another look inside and could not find my appendix so, figuring it had desintegrated in the absess (abscess), stitched me up and sent me home. After my recovery I was feeling great for several months. About 6 months later, I had the same symptoms. We contacted the same emergency doctor and he was baffled. They went in and found a smaller absess (abscess) around my appendix area, got rid of that, found my appendix and removed it. They studied this unsual case and it turns out that my appendix had a pin-size hole in it and from this hole was leaking the "poison", or what I understood as a kid as poison - making me have a sort of long drawn out appendix attack. Anyway, I'm not sure if my experience can help anyone, but I'm told there have been very few similar to it. Your symptoms and recurrence reminded me of my own situation long ago.
I wish you all health and happiness.

[Missy458]

I recently got my medical records from a few different doctors and in two of the reports, it said there was no appendix & had apparently been removed in the past, which I know never happened! I guess I was born without mine! I have had digestion problems since I was about 14. I am 30 now.