On April Fools Day 2006, I woke up to what I later found out was a spontaneously collapsed lung.
Anyone who's experienced a collapsed lung can assure you the treatment is brutal. They basically cut open your chest between two of your ribs (on the affected side), insert a tube and sew it in place, then apply a light vacuum on that tube to suck out the air and fluid between your chest cavity and lung, causing your lung to re-inflate. You also go through a powerful round of antibiotics and are put on oxygen to make up for your 50% reduced lung function. The suction process takes about a week, and the pain is excruciating and immune to powerful pain killers.
I would have died from this without the emergency surgery and treatment, and if it had been just 60 years earlier, a collapsed lung would have been a death sentence.
I had 4 of these in a 3 month span before I got the full treatment which was the most awful experience that I've ever had. And I'm including when I had cancer in that. 1/10 do not recommend.
On April Fools Day 2006, I woke up to what I later found out was a spontaneously collapsed lung.
Anyone who's experienced a collapsed lung can assure you the treatment is brutal. They basically cut open your chest between two of your ribs (on the affected side), insert a tube and sew it in place, then apply a light vacuum on that tube to suck out the air and fluid between your chest cavity and lung, causing your lung to re-inflate. You also go through a powerful round of antibiotics and are put on oxygen to make up for your 50% reduced lung function. The suction process takes about a week, and the pain is excruciating and immune to powerful pain killers.
I would have died from this without the emergency surgery and treatment, and if it had been just 60 years earlier, a collapsed lung would have been a death sentence.
I had 4 of these in a 3 month span before I got the full treatment which was the most awful experience that I've ever had. And I'm including when I had cancer in that. 1/10 do not recommend.