'Tis the Season

An odd question for everyone...has anyone noticed any seasonality in regards to your pain scale? Let me explain....every year around October I have one of the worst battles with pain that I experience all year. I will usually have a bout with some fairly serious pain, with the after affects lasting up to 3-4 days at times.

Interestingly enough, 3 of the 4 collapsed lungs that I've had were within the months of October and November. Not sure if this is a strange coincidence or something more.....

Keep fightin' my fellow Pneumo's!

Running.

Just got back from a 2-mile run. I had some slight pain in one of my lungs about half way through, so I walked for a minute and then ran the rest of the way. Feeling great!

I've started running three to four times a week and have experienced no ill side effects.

Does anyone else experience lung pain while running or other aerobic exercise? Has anyone run any half or full marathons since their pneumo?

Chest Tube Initiation

So, let's get back to the ER story....

I walk through the ER doors for the second time in two days and get immediately taken back into a sheet-walled ER room.

The doc walks in and explains that 20% of my left lung has collapsed and in order to fix it, he will need to insert a straw-sized chest tube that will be inserted in the side of my chest, extend down through my ribs and into my chest cavity. There, the tube will release the air that is trapped inside my chest cavity, that was preventing my lung from re-inflating.

Side note: When your lung collapses, it releases air and then closes back up. Your chest cavity is air tight, so the released air has no where to go.

I tell the Dr. to do what he needs to. By this time I was so tired of the pain I was willing to do whatever to alleviate it.

I was provided a little topical anesthetic to numb my skin, and that was it. They are not really able to numb this chest tube process.

So I roll over on my right side, and the Dr. begins to insert the chest tube on the upper-left side of my chest, below my arm bit. He navigates through my ribs and down towards my lung, and hits my chest wall.

Your chest wall is about the same consistency as a basketball, so it's not easy to poke through.

It took the Dr. nearly putting all his weight on the chest tube to finally push the tube through my chest wall.

The process had already hurt considerably, but pushing through my chest wall was extremely painful.

Once the tube was inserted, Dr. hooked up a little hand operated pump thing and proceeded to suck out nearly 2-liters of air from my chest cavity.

As he did so, I felt instant relief.

Although I was still in pain and discomfort following the procedure, it was much more comfortable.

And that was it. They sent me on my way.

I was pretty physically drained for a while following this whole ordeal. It probably took me about a month before I felt like myself again. It was hard for me to climb a flight of stairs or go for an extended walk, for those first few weeks.

But I eventually made it back to full strength. I quickly put this experience behind me, and frankly, it didn't cause me to much concern that this might happen again in the future. And why should I be concerned? Upon asking the ER Dr., he didn't indicate any real worry that this would be a re-occurring problem.

Little did I know I had three more to go.

Quick Side Note...

A little off topic of my last post, but thought I'd share some experiences from the last few days.

I play in a local rec basketball league with a group of guys I work with. We had a game on Tuesday - so I exercised pretty hard for about an hour.

As a result, I had to deal with some pretty dull/sharp pain in my back and upper chest(right under by collarbone). The pain increased when laughing/singing, etc. The pain lasted from Wednesday night until about noon today - when it finally subsided to just the normal, every day dull pain.

I've experienced this several times since my first pneumo after exercising hard - not every time I exercise - only on occasion. To help with the pain, I usually have the wife massage a certain spot in my back(I'm going to go into more detail about the spot on my back in a later post), a heating pad also feels very good and seems to help with pain management and finally - Advil seems to be pretty effective in helping as well. Nothing to ground breaking, but anything to ease the pain is great!

I'm not sure what is actually causing the pain, but I've always assumed it's some type of inflammation - which is why I think Advil can be effective at times.

November 14, 2005

There I was a healthy, tall(6'4''), slender(170 lbs.), unsuspecting 20-year old. Healthy as a horse.

Or....at least I thought so.

That day began the same as any other.... I woke up at the same time; cleansed in the same shower; ate the same Lucky Charms; and headed out to work at the same time.

Around noon I headed home to grab a bite to eat.

After eating, I decided to lay down for a quick nap before heading back to work - feeling a little hammered.

That attempted nap changed my life.

A few minutes after laying down, I rolled over on my left side and took a deep breathe.

And it happened.


I'd like to jump in here real quick and just say....who knew napping was dangerous?

Little did I know it's right up there with hammering a bottle of Nyquil then jumping into the ring against Roy Jones Jr. and the Chicago Bears offensive line.


Anyway....I heard a muffled pop followed by pain stemming from the left side of my sternum.

That pain quickly spread to the whole left side of my chest, with a lot of pain just under by collarbone, then into my shoulder and down the left side of my back.

Not knowing what was causing the pain, I laid on the floor attempting to stretch out my chest, back, shoulder....anything to get the pain to subside.

But nothing was working. And by that time, it was becoming increasingly harder to breathe.

It soon got to the point where I had to take short, quick breaths to avoid sharp, stabbing pain.

About 20 minutes into all of this, I decided to wander over to the emergency room. I thought maybe I had just pulled some kind of ligament or muscle in my chest - but wanted to get checked out just to make sure it wasn't anything serious.

I walked up to the ER receptionist, explained my symptoms, and they immediately grabbed a wheel chair and rushed me into one of their back rooms - ahead of some dude whose head was wrapped like a mummy with blood soaked bandages.

That's when I mentally wet my pants.

They quickly took my vitals and then begin hooking me up to an EKG. Following that they took a few x-rays, ran some other tests and two hours later the doc stepped into my widely accessible curtain bordered ER room with the news..............

"You have a torn chest wall," he told me.

That sounded about right to me, so I gladly accepted the 800mg Ibuprofen they prescribed for the pain and went on my merry way.

Later that day, the pain had subsided slightly - although was still causing a great deal of discomfort. At the time I thought it was the 800mg kicking in. I now know that 800mg couldn't touch that pain - instead my body's adrenaline had kicked in making the pain at least bearable.

That night when I laid down to go to sleep I immediately experienced a painful, uncomfortable, bubbling sensation located right along the left side of my sternum - where the initial pain had stemmed from.

When I sat up, the bubbling would stop.

Lay down, and it would fire right back up again.

Not only that, but laying down made it harder to breathe.

There was no way I was getting any sleep laying down. So, I propped myself sitting up on the couch and dozed in and out of sleep over the next 8 hours.

The following morning, Sunday, I attended a church meeting. When I returned home I had a voice-mail waiting for me.

"This message is for Todd. This is (Betty) calling from Thompson Hospital. We need you to come in immediately. Your x-rays were reviewed by one of our specialists and it was found that you have a partially collapsed lung."

Yep, that's right. After all the tests they ran in the ER the prior day - not one of them set of an alarm that I was waddling around with a deflated lung.

Looking back now, I can't blame them. A spontaneous pneumothorax victim is a rare breed. When an otherwise healthy 20-year old dude steps foot in the emergency room and complains of chest pain due to a nap.....a collapsed lung has got to be down the list of things that come to mind.

So, still in my church clothes - I drove myself back to the ER.

To be continued.....

You Found Him.

Pneumothorax. Sounds like a sea creature you'd find scraping the bottom of the ocean.

It's also a word I'd never heard before November 14, 2005. 

And unless you're a medical professional, chances are your life was forever altered by something you'd never heard of either. 

If you're first experience with pneumo was anything like mine - a collapsed lung was the last thing that crossed my mind when the pain settled in. 

Only 4 in 100,000 people per year experience a spontaneous pneumothorax. From November 2005 'til now, I've never personally met a fellow pneumo victim - and I'm no mountain-man. In that time I've lived in the Salt Lake City metro area populated by around 2 million people.

If you've just recently found pneumo, welcome to the club. I know how you're feeling. The uncertanty that follows a pneumo is a little scary. Hopefully my story can give you some valuable insight into the days to come. 

Keep your head up - you're gonna be fine. 

Until next time, no-mo' pneumo's.