05/04 - Swimming Saturday!

lol - it didn't actually "pop" but it was collapsed... "spontaneous pneumothorax"

Woke up with pain from my mid back around my left side to my chest and had a little difficulty breathing. Went to work just thinking maybe it was just some weird passing thing. It got worse as the day went on, and on my lunch break, I called my boss and said I was going to the hospital.

First, it's just the pain...like general soreness..then it's like having a heavy object sitting on your chest, and you can't fully catch your breath. Then, it develops into coughing fits, and with those, you *really* can't catch your breath. Apparently it's not completely unheard of for it to just spontaneously collapse like that...more often in taller, thin men (I'm 6' and like 145 lbs soaking wet)

 

I think you're right, if you don't get to a doctor within a short amount of time you could die from a collapsed lung

 

In my situation, there was obviously plenty of warning time, but had I left it (i.e. gone back to work and just tried to go about my day) I'd probably eventually have become hypoxic, lost consciousness, and gone into respiratory arrest. Judging by how I personally felt (by no means a valid medical explanation here), I'd say I still had several hours before anything that "severe" would have occurred.

 

Did they have to put the tube into your chest that pumped air in while it healed?

 

Yep...that's a whole other fun story to tell (I touched on it a few days ago here actually).

The doctor who put the chest tube in was a jerk...I was very uneasy and trying to ask questions for reassurance, etc. and he never answered/spoke to me. Then they brought in a bunch of students to observe (I said it was okay...wouldn't have if I'd known what would happen), and the doctor almost started to cut before I was anesthetized.

During the procedure one of the students fainted, and everyone started going over to take care of them...meanwhile, I started waking up mid-procedure because they weren't paying attention. One of the nurses in the room saw my sister at a baseball game (I had here there for company/comfort) a couple months later and said that she "prayed" that I wasn't conscious enough to remember it because it was - the nurse's words - "a shitshow"...luckily I wasn't.

Spent the weekend in the hospital with a tube in my side.

 

I just re-read your post...I didn't need to go on a respirator or anything like that. They just put in a chest tube to drain the air and fluid from the area. The lung reinflates itself at that point...

It's kind of like you see on tv (but not as fast) where they jam a syringe into someone's chest and you hear the air that's built up escape and the lung just fills back up with your normal breathing.

 

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(if this were to happen, I'd assume the patient is already coding and it'd be done as an emergency/stop-gap measure until a proper chest tube can be put in)

 

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Jeez, medical horror stories in here lol Glad you survived