My wife almost died because I delayed a visit to ER – but there’s a reason I avoid US hospitals | Arwa Mahdawi

She woke me in the night with stomach pains, which I dismissed as gas. Her treatment was great, but we are still waiting for the bill and US healthcare can be cruelly expensive

Last week I almost killed my wife. It was the middle of the night and E poked me awake (grounds for murder in itself) to tell me that she wasn't feeling well and there was an agonising pain in her stomach. I made a few sympathetic noises, gestured towards some painkillers and went back to sleep. An hour later she budged me awake again to say that she thought she should go to the emergency room. Are you sure?" I asked. The idea of rousing our sleeping toddler and Uber-ing to a Philadelphia hospital at 3am seemed a little extreme. It's probably just gas or something," I said. See how it is in the morning!"

The next morning it was worse. My wife went to ER where she was told that her appendix had cruelly turned on her and she needed an appendectomy. The appendix may look like a tiny, harmless worm but it can become deadly very quickly. One minute it's just quietly hanging out in your gut; the next, it's rupturing and you're at risk of dying of a horrible infection. It's kind of humbling really: a 10cm (4in) tube that everyone used to think was a completely useless vestigial organ (now scientists think it might be used as a sort of safe house for helpful bacteria) can kill you unless you get medical help fast.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist