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Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a journalist who lives in Glasgow, Scotland. There are 1308 posts in the archives. You can subscribe to a feed. This post was made on March 29, 2002 and belongs in the misc. category. The previous post was , and the next post is .

Spontaneous Pneumothorax

When it’s the day before your birth­day, one week before your hol­i­day to New York and slap bang in the middle of work, the last thing you want is a spon­tae­neous pneu­moth­o­rax, or col­lapsed lung. It really hurts, and more often than not, requires the inser­tion of a chest tube, which runs from a hole in your side to a plas­tic water con­tainer, which bub­bles as the lung rein­flates. (It was noted that, with an extra hole in my chest, i could have been used as a human bong.)

Just for fun, I have to have pleu­rode­sis, which involves spray­ing ‘such agents as talc’ inbe­tween my lungs and the inside of my chest. This acts as an irri­tant, bind­ing the two sur­faces together. Damn those apical blebs.

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Posted at 10am on 29/03/02 by Jack Mottram to the misc. category.
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  1. Birth­day

    Donna and I share a Birth­day. Look: This time last year…

    Posted by Submit Response at 12am on 25.03.03

  2. This souns wierd but my dog has copme down with spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax. We had her lungs aspi­rated today and­found 2300ml in hwer right lung and 63000ml in her left. If any one knows any other treat­ments besides surgery which I cant afford because no hos­pi­tals will even think about pay­ment plans please let me know. Today is Mon­dady June 23. We have to have a deci­sion by Thurs­day at the latest. THANK YOU

    Posted by Eric hathaway at 4am on 24.06.03

  3. I am also a victim of the afflic­tion you speak of. I am a 45 year old white male which endured numer­ous episodes of spon­tae­neous pneu­moth­o­rax as a teenager. I also had a sur­gi­cal pleu­rode­sis on one lung and a chem­i­cal pleu­rode­sis on the other. This pro­ce­dure works but chest pains have always been a part of my life. This past week, while shov­el­ing snow, I had another reoc­cur­rance of this trou­bling prob­lem. My lung that had the sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure evi­dently col­lapsed again, twenty-​six years after the surgery.

    My under­stand­ing of this prob­lem is that there are blis­ters on the outer sur­face of the lung, called blebs. Every­one has these blebs to a degree due to fric­tion between the sur­face of the lungs and the chest cavity. Some­times these blebs burst and leak air from the inside of the lung. An air pocket is cre­ated on the out­side of the lung which breaks down the tissue and causes severe pain. A chest tube is inserted to remove the air pocket, which in turn pulls the lung back into the space that was cre­ated by the air pocket.

    Usu­ally per­sons prone to have this afflic­tion are young, slen­der, white males. Reoc­cur­rance is usu­ally indi­ca­tion of an ongo­ing prob­lem which will require sur­gi­cal or chem­i­cal inter­ven­tion such as pleu­rode­sis. After pleu­rode­sis, risk of reoc­cur­rance is reduced how­ever chest pains are not uncom­mon (from my own experiences).

    Posted by Mike at 1am on 29.01.04

  4. Thanks for your com­ment Mike - so sorry to hear you had another pneu­moth­o­rax after all those years - when I was in hos­pi­tal, there were a couple of older blokes who’d found the con­di­tion had returned. Some­thing for me to look for­ward to, I suppose.

    And you’re right about the chest pains - I get them when it’s cold, and even more when I fly…

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 10am on 29.01.04

  5. Had the same prob­lem. Just come out of hos­pi­tal last week, after a second episode of pneu­moth­o­rax, hope the surgery has fixed the prob­lem. I’ve now got to sit around for 2 weeks, as i cant work. Just won­dered if anyone has had the prob­lem in both lungs, as my doctor scared me by saying there is a likely chance my other lung could col­lapse some­time. Great, can’t wait.

    Posted by Matt at 8pm on 28.02.04

  6. Hi Matt - good to hear that you got your surgery after two. Due to a bloody cler­i­cal error I had four col­lapses before anyone even men­tioned the pos­si­bil­ity of surgery.

    In my case the blebs were only on one lung, but they did warn that having one col­lapse increased the risk of the other one going… but I’ve been fine since the surgery, which was a good while ago now.

    Fin­gers crossed it goes well for you too.

    Posted by Jack at 2pm on 29.02.04

  7. I AM A 22 YR. OLD FEMALE AND HEVE HAD THE SAME PROB­LEM FOR THE LAST 8 YEARS. MY LUNG COL­LAPSES EVERY 4 MONTHS AND I AM IN THE HOS­PI­TAL. jUST RECENTLY I HAD TO HAVE MY UPPER RIGHT LOBE REMOVED. IT IS PAINFUL,DEVASTING,SCARY. I WISH SOME­ONE COULD FIND A CURE FOR THIS,BECAUSE I AM TIRED OF HURTING.

    Posted by ANNA at 3pm on 07.03.04

  8. Good­ness, that sounds awful Anna - get well soon.

    Posted by Jack at 3pm on 12.03.04

  9. I suf­fered from a pneu­moth­o­rax last feb­ru­ary (2003). I had an oper­a­tion (tho­ra­co­tomy) which fixed me up after having 5 drains - oh what fun they are!
    I still have pains if i overdo it or breathe very deeply. I was told there is a chance of the other lung col­laps­ing, but not a big chance - lets hope not.

    Posted by Andy Donovan at 6pm on 13.03.04

  10. Hi
    I suffer from sp on both lungs and it seems to happen at the same time every year. Just out of Hos­pi­tal in Jan­u­ary again. Been for an out patient appoint­ment last week and was told that I need surgery on both lungs. Really scared as they told me I will have 2 chest drains in each time and will be on mor­phine!!!! The Sur­geon said he will oper­ate 1 week, give me 1-2 weeks recov­ery and then oper­ate on the other side. I was told that this is common in tall, slim people in their mid 20’s, well I’m only 5’1 3/4”. I am suf­fer­ing severe pain all the time in my left lung and have give up my job because of this and being short of breath all the time does anyone know of any sup­port group for suf­fers of spon­ta­neous pneumothorax.

    Posted by fiona wright at 9pm on 25.03.04

  11. After having three spon­tae­neous pnemoth­o­rax had to have sur­gi­cal pleuorode­sis that was seven months ago I’m still having pain on right hand side also chest pain and feel­ings of heav­i­ness on right lung.I’ve been back to hos­pi­tal for more x-rays but ca’nt seem to find any­thing wrong I have to go for some breath­ing tests.

    Posted by Patricia Brown at 2am on 28.03.04

  12. Since Jan,06/04 have had 2 sp.,the last was March 29/04.I go for a CT Scan on April 13/04.The next time will have a surgery.My second occur­ance was more painful than the first,still having a bit of trou­ble breathing.The more i read on the sub­ject the more wor­ried i become.After my first one i never recov­ered com­pletely and when­ever i fin­ished work i was quite tired.Even now i figure i will always be out of breath and always tired after doing things.Thanks for Listening

    Posted by Richard at 2am on 11.04.04

  13. I had a pneu­moth­o­rax one week after the removal of my left tes­ti­cle from cancer. I was and still am 28 years old. I puffed a smoke the one morn­ing and went back to bed and when I got up I felt the short­ness of breath and went to the hos­pi­tal where I stayed for 5 days. It’s been over seven months and from time to time I still get phan­tom pains. My doctor says it’s nerves and may last a year or so. He also says I will not have another. I think it’s related to the anes­thetic weak­en­ing and caus­ing damage and vul­ner­a­bil­ity to my lung. Not to men­tion the smok­ing. I’ve since quit but have been eager to find infor­ma­tion on encour­ag­ing heal­ing to strengthen res­pi­ra­tory health. Would jog­ging at this point be ben­e­fi­cial? Please respond. AL

    Posted by AL at 4am on 18.04.04

  14. I am white male 22, 6ft tall. Had my (first) spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax in Jan­u­ary 2004 and had a chest drain put in for 6 days. I was dis­charged and told it could happen again (10% chance they said). Three months later I am having strange bilat­eral chest pains which are pretty annoy­ing. I want to try and get on with my life with­out wor­ry­ing about it hap­pen­ing again but I find these pains tend to remind me that it could happen again. With regards to Al above, jog­ging is ben­e­fi­cial in gen­eral to anyone. I have spoken to a doctor (an extremely knowl­edgable man - a former con­sul­tant physi­cian to the Queen) and he says that exer­cise will not make it worse. I can only imag­ine that it would improve the con­di­tion of your lungs. I am going to start going to the gym again this week after three months. Giving up smok­ing is all good and jog­ging will help your res­pi­ra­tory system recover from the damage done. Take it easy though mate and stay of the cigs. Stu

    Posted by Stu at 1pm on 21.04.04

  15. I have had s.ps for the past 4 years or so I have had chest drains as an in patient, but so far have not had surgery, my sps are con­nected to my monthly cycle, always hap­pen­ing almost every 9/10 months on the first day of my period, I manage by taking it easy and not doing any­thing too stress­ful. So far I’ve avoided surgery as it sounds very painful, even years later, get­ting really fed up now though, have been offered a pleurec­tomy, anyone know any­thing about it?

    Posted by Sarah at 3pm on 21.04.04

  16. Hi, I know how every­one feels since I have had one episode of a sp. pneu­moth­o­rax. I am a tall, slen­der, 20 year old, asian male, col­lege stu­dent. I do not smoke or doing any drugs either. It was my left lung and hap­pened to happen when I was writ­ing a paper on Jan. 28th, 2004. I spent a week in the hos­pi­tal with a chest tube. How­ever, my lung didn’t heal within that week, so the doctor decided on surgery. The type of surgery I received was Tho­ra­coscopy or often known as VITS. They use micro­scopes and go into your chest cavity to seal the hole with sta­ples. My surgery took only 1 hour and after that, I was released within four days (Feb. 5th-9th). I also had pleu­rode­sis, but they didn’t use talc since they felt I was too young to have it. Instead, they used some­thing dif­fer­ent where they would rub some­thing like sand­pa­per on the lung wall to make it sticky so my lung would stick, as I breathed, to the wall and thus, hope­fully pre­vent­ing another lung col­lapse. After the surgery, it was inter­est­ing when my doctor pointed out that the hole was about a pin-​size one, very little. Since then, I’ve been feel­ing quite good though I still have some pains when I take a deep breath or when I move from time to time. There is also still a tender, sore spot on my chest from the surgery which I am con­sult­ing about with a doctor right now. I don’t know anyone else but me who has had this and I’m con­cerned about the pains that I have been having since the doctor told me the pains should have gone away about 4-6 weeks after the surgery. It has been 3 months now. It is also very dis­com­fort­ing to know that my right lung may have blebs and it can col­lapse at any­time. From the CAT scan they did, they said my right lung looks fine, so I’m rely­ing on that. I am won­der­ing if anyone else has received this type of surgery and how well are they recov­er­ing? Thanks for lis­ten­ing everyone.

    Posted by Joseph at 3pm on 06.05.04

  17. Hi Joseph - that sounds pretty much the same oper­a­tion as I ended up having. It took quite a while - maybe six months - for the pains in my chest to settle down, and even now, nearly two years later, I find it dif­fu­cult to lie down on my left side and get occa­sional pains.

    I guess it’s some­thing we just have to put up with - it cer­tainly beats having your lungs col­lapse all the time!

    Posted by Jack at 6pm on 08.05.04

  18. I have read all the above com­ments and have had exactly the same thing. In June ‘99, when I was 28 yrs old, I had my first spon pneumo and had VATS to fix it as it col­lapsed two more times in the hosp­tial. I have pain in my right lung 5 years later almost on a daily basis. I am the per­fect fit, as I am 6’1 and weigh 140lbs. And a smoker. Now 8 months ago, in June, ‘03 my left lung col­lapsed and I had a chest tube but no VATS. The doc­tors refused to do it even though they knew I had a pre­vi­ous his­tory of this dis­ease. Unfor­tu­nately I suffer severe pain on a 24/7 basis with stab­bing pains and severe chest tight­ness. It is the most hor­ri­ble pain you can imag­ine. I live in fear on a daily basis that my lungs could col­lapse again. I just had a CT scan two days ago (it is now May 25, ‘04) and found out I have more blebs on my right lung that col­lapsed 5 years ago. The tho­racic sur­geon told me I was almost 100% assured it could never col­lapse again as I went through with the VATS. Well, now there are new blebs. The worst thing is my left lung hurts more than my right and I didn’t even have VATS done on that one. I have been to the top doc­tors at the Mayo Pain Clinc in Jack­sonville, FL and they are unable to explain my con­stant pain. There is some­thing called post-​thoracotomy pain syn­drome in which 10% of people who have had a spon­ta­neous pneumo acquire. I seem to be one of them. I have tried every single drug known to man to help with this pain and noth­ing works, not even Oxy­con­tin. I have how­ever been taking Elavil (Amitripty­line) which seems to reduce the pain by at least 50%…it is a tri­cyclic anti­de­pres­sant used for nerve pain. At first I thought it was a mir­a­cle as the pain seemed to dis­ap­pear almost 75%..but now, 3 months of daily Elavil, it is not work­ing as much. The only thing they sug­gest now is trying a nerve block but I am scared of the con­se­quences and have heard they can cause prob­lems else­where, or only last for a few days. This is a hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble prob­lem and causes extreme anx­i­ety and stress on a daily basis. I was even fired from my job as I had to miss too many days from work going from doctor to doctor to find relief from my pain. Now 8 months later, the pain is really no better and all anyone can tell me is that this is caused by damage to the inter­costal nerves as a result of the chest tube place­ment. The only thing I can sug­gest is for all of you to try Elavil, at least 25mg, it is not a pain med­ica­tion, so you do not get addicted…it is an anti­de­pres­sant that helps with nerve pain, it is the only thing that I have found helps at all. If anyone out there has any other ideas or infor­ma­tion I would appre­ci­ate it. I am only 33 yrs old and suffer chronic pain on a daily basis, not to men­tion chronic lower back pain as well. I have gone into a deep depres­sion over this and do not know where to go from here. It is very frus­trat­ing to hear from the top doc­tors in the world that they do not know how to fix it.. so we must all live in faith that one day some­one will come up with a cure for the pain and a cure for these darn blebs. I sin­cerely empathize with all of you who have had this unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence as it is truly the most hor­ri­ble pain one can go through. And then to hear that it is all in your head by doc­tors who are incom­pe­tent only makes things worse. Please if anyone out there knows of any­thing else to try, please let me know, I appre­ci­ate it, and wish all of you the very best of luck, Sin­cerely, Todd R., Orlando, FL. Please feel free to email me any­time and I will respond to anyone who emails. Thanks again, and all of you take care, Todd.

    Posted by Todd at 4am on 26.05.04

  19. I am cur­rently suf­fer­ing through yet another sp right now. I just grad­u­ated col­lege and won’t start a teach­ing job until August, so I have no insur­ance. Has anyone had any prob­lems with just “ignoring” an sp? I know I shouldn’t, but I seri­ously can’t afford another hos­pi­tal visit. I was just there 3 months ago. I’ve lost count of my sps and, though they mainly occur on my left lung, I have had surgery on both lungs. My right lung hasn’t given me any trou­ble since then (knock on wood), but my left lung is ter­ri­ble and I don’t know what to do. No doc­tors I speak with have any solu­tions and I’m sick of chest tubes and 3-night hos­pi­tal stays. If anyone has any advice/info, please let me know. I’m get­ting frus­trated and des­per­ate. Best of luck to you all.

    BTW, I’m a 24-yr-old female asian amer­i­can who has never smoked and I’m only 5’3” and weigh 115 lbs.

    Posted by Carrie at 8pm on 30.05.04

  20. i am a male 66 yrs of age i had my first spon­tae­neous pneu­moth­o­rax march 5 o4 had chest tube inserted removed 5 08 sent home from hos­pi­tal 5 09 had reoc­cur­ance 5 12 another chest tube inserted removed 5 14 had another attack 5 17 went to sur­gury for pleu­rode­sis that day released from hos­pi­tal 5 23 still have the pain on that lung as well as short­ness of breath i tell people it feels like i am car­ry­ing a suit­case under my right arm after 2 months it is start­ing to feel some better at least can sleep at night with­out pain med­ica­tion most of the time like all the other people i hope this will be the end of it not much fun thanks for listening

    Posted by robert at 6pm on 31.05.04

  21. Hi
    As a recur­rent sp suf­ferer i thought you people might like to know there is an excel­lent web site at http://​www.​bleb​dis​ease.com it is the Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax Patient Net­work. The site is great for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with others in our sit­u­a­tion and also is con­duct­ing research, has a chat room, forums etc…hope to see you there

    Posted by marianne at 6pm on 22.06.04

  22. Thanks for the pointer Marianne…

    Posted by Jack at 10am on 23.06.04

  23. Hello again
    I left a note on the 25th March 2004. I suffer with sp on both lungs and am still wait­ing for my oper­a­tions. My brother who is 17 tall and thin was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal last night with severe chest pains and would you believe it he has a col­lapsed lung aswell. Does anyone know if this annoy­ing dis­ease can run in familys?

    Posted by fiona wright at 10pm on 17.07.04

  24. I have had to Pneumothorax’s, which were both very painful.
    I have now been told i may need an oper­a­tion where they stick my lungs togeather so that they can not split again but i can not find much infor­ma­tion on this oper­a­tion, any one no of a web site?

    Posted by Kyle at 9pm on 26.09.04

  25. Hi Kyle - that’s the oper­a­tion I had. It’s not too hor­ri­ble, so don’t worry!

    You might want to check out the web­site men­tioned by Mar­i­anne above - http://​www.​bleb​dis​ease.com - and look for infor­ma­tion on pleu­rode­sis (the name of the stick­ing together operation).

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 3pm on 29.09.04

  26. Hi,

    I suf­fered my first coll­pased lung in Decem­ber 2002. My doctor rold me I was the per­fect setreo­type for this con­di­tion, 22 years old, male and quite tall and slim. My right lung col­lapsed com­pletely, requir­ing a chest drain.
    After a year my left lung went, and since then has col­lapsed 6 or 7 times. I am now on a wait­ing list for a tho­ra­co­tomy which should hope­fully rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion. Believe it or not the only reason I am on this site is because I am cur­rently suf­fer­e­ing one at work and wanted to see if there was any chance of get­ting a tho­ra­co­tomy in the very near future i.e. today!

    Posted by Tom Hawkins at 11am on 06.10.04

  27. i have suf­fered from 2 sp now i am a33 year old female i suf­ferded my first one at the age of 30 i am due to go on hol­i­day to florida in 5 weeks time so im hoping that my doctor will let me fly amanda

    Posted by amanda at 5pm on 08.10.04

  28. My wife had a pneu­moth­o­rax for the first time recently. It’s been over 10 days and after having two tubes (one to side and one to top) to her left chest cavity. She came home after 10 days with the top tube still inserted to drain the air out of top of her left lung, and still no signs of improve­ment.. I’m just really wor­ried now at this point that she may need to check into the hos­pi­tal again. She hasn’t had any surgery or glue yet as the sur­geon thinks it will heal by itself. She’s a 31 year old female, 5’7” height, and thin, non-​smoker.

    Posted by Paul at 6pm on 03.11.04

  29. I had my first right spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax on 25 Oct 04 while walk­ing down the veg­etable isle at the gro­cery store, went into the ER on 26 Oct 04 and imme­di­ately received a chest tube. The chest tube remained for a week in hopes that my lung would heal on its own…both suc­tion and water seal didn’t do the trick as my lung would con­tinue to col­lapse. On 03 Nov 04, I recieved a VATS (video-​assisted tho­racic surgery) with wedge recon­struc­tion and pleu­rode­sis. I found that one tube in my chest prior to the surgery was bear­able but 2 tubes after surgery was a bit more cum­ber­some. The most painful part was the removal of the tubes! That wasn’t very cool! It has been over a week now and Im home, bruised and sore with four remark­able wounds (battle wounds I call them). I am very sur­prised to hear of all the reac­cur­ances that have been men­tioned and am a bit wor­ried. As a 2nd yr PT stu­dent I cant really miss too much more of class than I have already missed! I am very curi­ous as to how this hap­pened but the doc­tors really are unsure them­selves. They think it may be do to my men­strual cycle as I was sup­pose to have had it the day my lung col­lapsed. This type of pneu­moth­o­rax is called cata­me­nial pneu­moth­o­rax. Another idea for all those women who are tall, thin, non­smok­ers, is that it is cor­re­lated to an increase in stress in ones life that tends to create an irreg­u­lar men­strual cycle.
    Have any of you who have had a pleu­rode­sis noticed a dif­fer­ence in your breath­ing in that one lung? I cant explain it but I can def­i­nitely feel a dif­fer­ence prob­a­bly due to the lim­i­ta­tion of lung move­ment when I breathe. I also under­stand that many of you still have the nerve pain months and years from the surgery. That does not sound like fun and some­thing to not look for­ward too. Good luck to all of you who have had a pneu­moth­o­rax, are deal­ing with one, and those who are still suf­fer­ing from the pain of having one. Carly

    Posted by Carly at 12am on 13.11.04

  30. I am a South African .

    Let me explain my lung col­lapse expe­ri­ence .

    I had my first one on the 31st Jan 2000 this was my left lung . This was a grad­ual process . I play tennis
    And the one day after tennis I had this chest pain and my GP told me it could be an inflamed muscle and he gave
    Me anti-​inflammatory which got rid of the pain . Every time I got this chest pain on the left side I popped a pile , until the
    The night of the 31st Jan 2000 when I felt major pain on my left hand and left chest , I thought it was a heart attack. When
    My GP send me for x-ray’s they found that I only had a third of my left lung func­tion­ing. So I under went the oper­a­tion which
    Was not that painful and ever since my left lung never gave me a prob­lem. 2 months later i was play­ing tennis again and I even flew to the US to do a six month project.

    Well now in 2004 on the 16th Sept while sit­ting in the can­teen at the office sip­ping on my coffee I felt a sharpen pain in my back
    And I first thought its my muscle , when I stood up I became short breath and my right side of my chest started swelling. I was rushed
    To a doctor who imme­di­ately diag­nosed it as a phneu­moth­o­rax. I under went surgery on the 17 Sept 2004 and was dis­charged on the
    Monday 20th Sept 2004. When I went for my follow-​up appoint­ment on the 23rd the x-ray’s showed that the lung did not com­pletely expanded.
    I was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal again and a drain con­nected to my chest with the hope that it would allow the lung to expanded com­pletely. After a week
    With the drain in me there was no improve­ment. I had to undergo a another oper­a­tion which was suc­cess­ful.
    This was a painful experience.

    The surgery I under went in 2000 and 2004 was a cut at the back and they scrap the sur­face of the lung so when it expands it attaches itself to
    The chest wall. (sur­gi­cal Pleurodesis)

    I now have pain that feels like muscle pain , but the doctor says it is pain caused by the nerve recon­struct­ing itself.He also says that my lungs will not col­lapse again based on the sur­gi­cal pleu­rode­sis procedure.

    The treat­ment and ser­vice I received from my Doctor and hos­pi­tal was excellent .

    Has anyone expe­ri­enced this nerver recon­struc­tion pains because it is really painfull it even wakes me up at night with a pulling feel­ing in side . I slight turn in my sleep and it feels like a knife in me.

    Regards
    Hassen

    Posted by Hassen at 7am on 13.11.04

  31. Hassen,
    It has been a little over a week since my R lung VATS/pleurodesis and last night was the first night that I awoke with knife like pain from my ster­num to my right side. A finger touch and even my cloth­ing or bed sheets brush­ing my R side is enough to set off the nerve pain. I know what you are talk­ing about and it is very frus­trat­ing. Im keep­ing my fin­gers crossed that the pain decreases soon! Good luck with your recov­ery. Carly

    Posted by Carly at 2pm on 13.11.04

  32. It’s get­ting busy here again, so I thought I pop in and say it’s been more than two years since the last time my lungs had a major col­lapse and I had the pleu­rode­sis oper­a­tion, and I’m fine! Just thought I’d add a hope­ful note for everyone…

    Also, as Mar­i­anne said above, check out the Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax Patient Net­work site - it has lots of infor­ma­tion, con­ducts research into SP, and lively forums.

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 4pm on 13.11.04

  33. I suf­fered my first sp on the 13th octo­ber 2004, they inserted a needle and almost instantly brought my left lung up again. 2 days later i awoke again in the middle of the night with the same pain and went back to A&E they X rayed again and said the lung was 30% deflated, but they sent me home saying it would come up again by itself over the next 7 days. 7 days later i returned for an X Ray and it had not inflated.I was sent home again saying that when (not if) it col­lapses again they will “stick” it back up. I am going out of my mind now wor­ry­ing when its going to happen again and pan­ick­ing at every pain of which there are quite a few.
    Is there anyone else out there in the same sit­u­a­tion?
    BTW I am 46yrs old 5ft tall and 7st 2lbs, so I dont exactly fir the stereo­type.
    Thankyou for listening.

    Posted by anne eldred at 5pm on 17.11.04

  34. Hi Anne - don’t worry too much!

    As I said above, I’ve had the ‘sticking’ oper­a­tion (assum­ing they mean pleu­rode­sis) and it isn’t too bad - pretty painful when you wake up, but that’s what mor­phine is for!

    I was in hos­pi­tal for about a week - would’ve been less, but there were slight com­pli­ca­tions - and was as right as rain within a couple of weeks after leav­ing hos­pi­tal. (In other words, it’s not a hideous major pro­ce­dure requir­ing lengthy recuperation.)

    Hope your op. goes well, if you need it.

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 5pm on 17.11.04

  35. Hi,
    I had my ‘pleurodesis’op two weeks ago now & my Wounds are heal­ing ok. I was only in hos­pi­tal 4 four days,which sur­prised me alot. The day after i was let out, wasnt very good & i was cough­ing up lumps of blood, after the shock of that things were get­ting better.
    As i write this i still have my Numb­ness on the left side where i had the op, does any 1 know when this numb­ness will go & i get feel­ings back?
    Im also sur­pose to be flying on the 4th dec, do you think ill bable 2 fly?
    Write bk if you got time, you may help me out. Thanks Kyle

    Posted by Kyle at 9pm on 18.11.04

  36. Hi Kyle - I was a bit numb down one side for about a fort­night after the op. As for flying - er, best ask your doctor about that one! (Per­son­ally, I was given the okay to fly after a few months, but the first couple of times I got quite bad chest pains on take­off and land­ing - scary, but every­thing was fine. Still haven’t had a sat­is­fac­tory answer on whether it’s safe for me to fly long-​haul, though.)

    And, once again: the Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax Patient Net­work is the best place for info on the condition.

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 9pm on 18.11.04

  37. Its so amaz­ing that there are people out there that share my story. Carly, you and I have alot in common. My first episode hap­pend in May, 2001. I was 36 yrs old, tall, thin white female. I have always been very active and in good phys­i­cal shape. I was a mas­sage ther­a­pist work­ing on a client and felt a very strange pain in my chest, right side. I fin­ished my ses­sion and needed to cancel the rest of the day. I went home think­ing I had a bad cold that was caus­ing me the trou­ble. I awoke the next morn­ing to a very sharp knife pain on my right side under my scapula. I went directly to the dr. who was very con­fused and told me that my lung had col­lapsed. The chest tube was the most unbe­liev­able pain I had ever felt. 6 months later, it happen again. I was actu­ally work­ing on the same client. Another chest tube. 4 months later here we go again, this time a deci­sion for surgery had been deter­mined. I was told with the pluer­ade­sis and tho­ra­cotmy my prob­lem would be solved and I could con­tinue with my life. The explaina­tion I received from the drs. was a gentic dis­or­der, being tall and thin, etc. Well, life was good for about 1 1/2years, I was walk­ing down the street and I felt that old famailar feel­ing, I waited until the next morn­ing before I went to the hos­pi­tal, hoping it would go away. I was about 10% pnemo. The drs. sent me home for rest and told me it would reab­sorb. It did. A friend who is a clin­i­cal researcher asked me if I had my period when I had these episodes, well sure enough. I called the dr and he said, no you don’t have that, its very rare…well I do have cata­me­nial pnemoth­o­rax dis­or­der. I am on con­tin­ues birth con­trol and try to get a handle on it. I have one now, I haven’t had one in 6 months. I went ot the hos­pi­tal and they sent me home with pain meds. I going back for another chest x-ray. Even with the meds, it still hurts and I can’t breathe with­out pain. You know the song, it only hurts when I breathe…its true about the lung feel­ing dif­fer­ent. When I am fine and I run, hike , rollerblade I have a prob­lem taking a full inala­tion with­out feel­ing that my lung is stuck, because it is. My thoughts and prays go to each of you.

    Posted by Jane at 10pm on 21.11.04

  38. Hey Jack. Well i asked my doc bout me flying & im really fucked off coz im not allowed 2 fly! takes the piss really! I have a slight prob­lem with my lung @ the mo as the doc sent me 4 an xray yesto­day but i dnt find out till monday bt it its bad ill find out b4 then! so i dont really know wots going on, i feel fine but the doc said theres summet wrong. ah well will see what hap­pens! kyle

    Posted by Kyle at 9pm on 24.11.04

  39. Hello every­one! I guess we are all in the same boat here! Also had 5 sp’s, and 2 sug­eries. had my front chest cut to the middle of my back 4 yrs. ago. Now living in the world of nerve pain! I go to a pain center and all they do is give me 180 pain pills. Tired of pain kick­ers. Had surgery to remove 3 nerves alone my ribs, 4 never blocks. And I still hurt! I also want to tell every­one that every­thing we”ve gone through is making us a stronger person!!

    Posted by sandy at 8am on 14.12.04

  40. Hello Todd. Have you ever tried using a heat­ing pad. I live off of mine. Helps me to sleep better with the pain on my left side. Also been to pain center. And now trying Lido­derm (Lido­caine patch 5%). I didn’t real­ize how many of us are going through the same thing here! Take care!!

    Posted by sandy at 11pm on 14.12.04

  41. Hi, I too have had prob­lems with my lungs. In Octo­ber of 2002, my right lung col­lapsed. I was in the hos­pi­tal for a week with a chest tube. As you all know this is very painful. In my expe­ri­ence, I was just sit­ting on the couch when this hap­pened. Many have said that it hap­pens mostly in tall, thin men. I am a 4’11” female and I weigh 90 pounds. Maybe it’s just in thin people. I don’t know. I haven’t had a reoc­curence thus far, but I do find I have prob­lems with breath­ing and chest pains some­times. I have to pace myself in order to keep my breath­ing pat­tern reg­u­lar. I wish you all the best of luck.

    Posted by Phoebe at 6pm on 06.01.05

  42. Hi all, I had surgery on Sept. 16/04 and I am still having so much pain. I had the left lung done and even in the hos­pi­tal I expe­ri­enced pain in my left breast (I am female) which was harder to deal with than the tube dis­com­fort. I had breast implants put in 2 yrs prior and my lung sur­geon wouldn’t set up a con­sul­ta­tion with my implant doctor saying that it was normal to have pain. It has been 3 1/2 months and the pain is still unbear­able. My breast and under­arm hurts so bad to even touch or have my clothes rub against them. From read­ing others com­ments here I guess it is nerve damage. Not sure who I am sup­pose to seek help from regard­ing the pain…lung doc, breast doc…family doc?? If anyone has any info regard­ing the nerve damage it would be greatly appre­ci­ated. I am going to start making calls to find help for the pain. Good luck all.

    Posted by kelley at 1am on 09.01.05

  43. At a guess Kelley, I’d say go back to the lung doc. first, or try asking for advice on http://​www.​bleb​dis​ease.com, where more clued-​up folk will be able to give you advice.

    Also, posters to this thread might be inter­ested to know that this page has been get­ting quite a lot of hits from the nhs.​co.uk domain (as in our won­der­ful, free National Health Ser­vice) - lets hope it’s fellow suf­fer­ers with lap­tops in hos­pi­tal cheek­ily using the ward ‘phone lines, and not doc­tors using Google to refresh their mem­o­ries on what to do when pre­sented with a col­lapsed lung!

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 4pm on 11.01.05

  44. Hi all I am a female get­ting ready to turn 28 in six days. I had a hemo pnue­moth­o­rax on July 24th of last year,I was in St.Louis at a ball game when my lung collapsed,but I made it through the ball game!I was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal­for 4 days with a large chest tube to drain the blood.After all of that fun I was released to go home on a three hour drive,but we made it home safely.After a day & a half being at home it hap­pened again. Iwas imme­di­atly adm­mited to the emer­gancy room where they inserted another chest tube. After 2days in the hos­pi­tal they did VATS surgery .I am still having prob­lems and pain >I had an X-ray about 3 weeks ago and I have a large bulla on the top right of my right lung (by the way this has all been on my right lung).I have also been having pain on my left side but I dont know if I am just being para­noid or what.C an anyone tell me what the chances of this hap­pen­ing to my right lung again or my left one period are? Sorry to take up so much time!

    Posted by Christa at 5pm on 14.01.05

  45. I feel your pain Christa. Here’s my story…I started having pain on my right side a year after the birth of my second daugh­ter in 1994. It would occur within the first three days of my period. I really think it has gone on much longer but not as severe as this. I was put into the hos­pi­tal with a col­lapsed lung. One doctor gave it a name Cata­me­nial Pneu­moth­o­rax. He did the surgery, talc, fol­lowed by a chest tube. (ugly garden hose stick­ing out of your side) They thought that would cure it, but I was still having peri­ods and on the third month after the surgery, on the third day of my period, I had a reoc­cur­ance. Again, I had a chest tube. This time the Gyno, Pul­monary, and Tho­racic Doctor, decided together let’s supress the peri­ods. Great, so I thought. Lupron, then Birth con­trol. Still had pain. This went on until the year 2000. Couldn’t take it any­more. No one under­stood. Even my hus­band, I think he thought I was over­re­act­ing, being a wimp. I finally had a total Hys­terec­tomy ovaries, too. Slight pain every now and then. But now my 15 year old daugh­ter who is tall and thin, too seems to be expe­ri­enc­ing the same symp­toms. We need help! She is very active in sports. I never had endometrio­sis. This has to be hor­mone related. We live in Ohio. I want to know why by just view­ing a few of these forums why so many people have these symp­toms but the doc­tors seem obliv­i­ous, and don’t know what to do. Thanks for listening..

    Posted by Kelly Rowan at 3pm on 19.01.05

  46. I had a sp last Feb. and spent two weeks in the hos­pi­tal. 5 chest tubes and one ugly scar down my side later and I’m still recov­er­ing. My prob­lem is all the pain in my inci­sion area. I just went to the doctor’s and he told me it was just my scar tissue, but it feels like it is in my bones. I am having a very hard time with this. It feels like I just had the surgery yes­ter­day! I use a heat­ing pad every night and take Advil as I am sick of how the pain killers make me feel. Does anyone have any advice, please I could really use it!!! Thanks

    Posted by Katie at 6am on 21.01.05

  47. Hi all..Just hap­pened to stum­ble across this web­site today.
    In 1992/1993 I had the worst 2 years of my life. As I was in my final two years of high school , both of my lungs gave me hell. My sister , who is two years older than me also had SP’s two years ear­lier in both lungs.
    March 1992 , aged 16 , I had an SP on my right lung , went to the hos­pi­tal , and was admit­ted , and a chest drain was inserted. I was released from hos­pi­tal 5 days later.
    Over the next 12 months I had 7 more SP’s , during that time though , I had vis­ited a Tho­racic Spe­cial­ist and he had informed me of a Pleu­rode­sis , which will pre­vent the lung from going down again from SP’s.
    This pro­ce­dure involved an inci­sion in the side of my chest for a small camera , and another inci­sion in my mid back for a small sta­pler which , after find­ing the ‘BLEBS’with the camera , the sta­pler would insert small tita­nium sta­ples , pinch­ing the ‘BLEBS’ closed.
    After finding/stapling all the ‘BLEBS’, they would fill the pleural space with tetra­cy­cline , which , in turn would cause the outer(parietal) and inner(visceral) layers of the pleura to become inflammed. They would drain all the tetra­cy­cline out , and the outer and inner layers would fuse together , kind of like , they scabbed up together and become one.
    I was totally against this idea , as it sounded extremely scary. He (the Spe­cial­ist) also advised me that if they found a ‘BLEB’ that the sta­pler could not get to , that they would remove a 3 inch lat­eral sec­tion of a rib , and I guess the sur­geon would insert his hand and staple it by hand. they would attach the removed rib back into place after the pro­ce­dure ha dfin­ished.
    This last part made my mind up for me not to have it done.
    But after the 7th SP , I was get­ting sick of it all and was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal and had the above Pleu­rode­sis per­formed.
    They found two ‘BLEBS’ at the top of my right lung and sta­pled them up. Thank God the sta­pler could get to them.
    I was in hos­pi­tal for 5 days , which , even though I felt like I had been hit by a truck , I was glad that it was all over.
    Then , 1 month before I was going to sit for the HSC (Aus­tralian Higher School Cer­tifi­cate) I was gro­cery shop­ping with my mum , when sud­denly my left lung deflated totally , and I knew exactly what was hap­pen­ing.
    I was admit­ted again to hos­pi­tal with a chest drain put in imme­di­ately. I was in the hos­pi­tal for 9 days because the lung just kept deflat­ing. Even­tu­ally the lung went back up , I went home for 5 days then back to hos­pi­tal to have the pleu­rode­sis per­formed on the left lung.
    It has been over 12 years since all that hap­pened , and I have’nt had any trou­ble at all.
    Touch wood.
    During that time , all I kept think­ing was , when is going to happen again. It almost starts to con­trol your life.
    Having the Pleu­rode­sis oper­a­tion was the best/scariest thing I have ever decided to have done. So , I urge anyone who is still unde­cided about having it done , go ahead and do it , you can’t live in fear of it hap­pen­ing again. Good luck . Pat

    Posted by Patrick at 7am on 28.01.05

  48. i to have had 10 lung col­lapses with 10 chest tubes they have done pluerode­sis on both lungs and done the talc powder to both lungs and they still are col­laps­ing. i am sched­uled for surgery again on monday i hope what­ever they try this time works

    Posted by jeannie at 11pm on 29.01.05

  49. Hey All,
    I have just turned 21 and had
    a sp last Octo­ber. I was just read­ing the paper and having break­fast when I got such bad back pain I was out on the floor. I thought it was a muscle as I had been to the gym the day before. After two days of pain killers and going to work and uni I went to the Dr. He doubted it was a sp because I am very short, but thin. He sent me to get X-rays, so I drove myself down and from there they sent me to ER (which I also drove myself to). It turns out my left lung was 100% col­lapsed (the worst they had ever seen). It wor­ried me that all the nurses wanted to watch as they had never seen the pro­ce­dure before. They had to
    do the chest tube 3 times to
    get it right and finally sent me home after 11 days in hos­pi­tal. Now I have seen another spe­cial­ist and he said I had a ten­sion pneu­moth­o­rax. Appa­rantly, I have to have the pleu­rode­sis oper­a­tion even after only having one col­lapsed lung. Has anyone else been diag­nosed sim­il­iarly?
    I am going in next Friday for the op and I wasn’t too wor­ried until I read your sto­ries today. It seems like this is a hor­ri­ble
    chronic con­di­tion for many of you. I’m really con­cerned about you fellow sp suf­fer­ers as well as my future. Good luck and best of health to all of you.

    Cheers,
    Kate in Oz

    Posted by Kate at 12pm on 02.02.05

  50. Hey Kate , I too had the pleu­rode­sis done straight after my left lung had com­pletely col­lapsed , and because the doctor said it will almost cer­tainly happen again.
    There is noth­ing to worry about.
    The pro­ce­dure will go fine , you will be sore for a few days , but the mor­phine shall take care of that , and then you wont have to worry about that lung col­laps­ing again.
    Godd luck , and I hope it goes well. Patrick

    Posted by Patrick at 9pm on 02.02.05

  51. Patrick’s right, Kate - pleu­rode­sis isn’t too hor­ri­ble, and you should be feel­ing fine within a week or two. (And, with­out wish­ing to be flip, the mor­phine is indeed a rather won­der­ful silver lining to the col­lapsed lung cloud.)

    And once again - best of luck to every­one join­ing the dis­cus­sion here.

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 2pm on 03.02.05

  52. Thanks for all the sup­port
    peops! From my prev. sp I am
    aware of the won­ders of mor­phine.
    I’ll be sure to let you know
    how it goes :)

    Posted by Kate at 11am on 04.02.05

  53. Hello All. This is an incred­i­ble resource-​thank you to every­one for shar­ing their expe­ri­ences. I am a 35 year old black female (5’6 105lbs). I expe­ri­enced my first pneumo approx­i­mately 2 months ago but thought that it was acid reflux and anx­i­ety. I sched­uled an appnt with my internist anyway and a chest xray revealed that I had actu­ally had a pneumo. I was shocked because I clearly don’t fit into the tra­di­tional at-​risk group. I was referred to one of the best lung spe­cial­ists in the coun­try, Dr. Robert Wolfe (at Cedars Sinai in Los Ange­les). He ordered a CT Scan, which revealed that my pneumo was heal­ing itself and that the air was reab­sorb­ing. He warned me that I would have a recur­rence and we dis­cussed my options (sur­gi­cal vs. non-​surgical). 2 weeks after my ini­tial visit with Dr. Wolfe, I had my second doc­u­mented pneumo. I imme­di­ately knew what it was this time and went in to see Dr. Wolfe. A chest xray revealed that I had in fact expe­ri­enced another pneumo. After my ini­tial diag­no­sis I researched the hell out of this evil beast called spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax and dis­cov­ered that the odds of recur­rence and fre­quency of recur­rence get worse and worse after the first two. The last thing that I wanted was an inva­sive surgery, but I felt that the hor­monal treat­ment option would only be delay­ing the inevitable and thereby decrease my qual­ity of life. Dr. Wolfe referred me to Dr. Clark Fuller who is a Tho­racic Sur­geon at Cedars. Dr. Fuller is a part­ner in the same Tho­racic prac­tice as Dr. McKenna (another fab­u­lous Tho­racic Sur­geon). I can’t say enough about Dr. Wolfe and Dr. Fuller-​they are the ABSOLUTE BEST. Dr. Fuller walked me through the tho­racic abra­sive pleu­rode­sis pro­ce­dure and I was admit­ted for surgery. I had surgery 12 hours later. The pro­ce­dure took approx­i­mately 1 hour and I was in intense pain imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the surgery in post-​operative recov­ery. They gave me lots of mor­phine, which dulled the pain and I was able to be trans­ferred back to my room. I was hos­pi­tal­ized 5.5 days and was given dilau­did for pain and com­pazine for nausea. The surgery revealed that I had blebs which had not been vis­i­ble via CT Scan. Dr. Fuller removed the blebs and per­formed the aba­sive tech­nique to cre­at­ing adhe­sion and scar­ring. My appetite was very poor-I could only stom­ach can­te­lope and chicken noodle soup. The mere whiff of any meats made me sev­erly nau­seous. I was up and walk­ing the day after my surgery and hated the embolism leg brace things that were attached the first 3 days. My urine catheter was removed 2 days after my surgery. The chest tubes were the worst part of the post-​op recov­ery. You’re sup­posed to blow/suck the Tri­flow (incen­tive deep breath­ing exer­ciser) 10 times every hour and I wasn’t able to blow/suck hardly at all UNTIL the chest tubes had been removed. The chest tubes were incred­i­bly uncom­fort­able and made sleep­ing and sit­ting up incred­i­bly painful and awk­ward. I couldn’t wait until they were yanked out :-) The chest tubes were actu­ally what forced me to get up and walk­ing so quickly because I was afraid of get­ting pneu­mo­nia due to inac­tiv­ity and my inabil­ity to do the blow/suck Tri­flow exer­cises. I could hear phlem build­ing up in my throat/lungs but couldn’t cough deep enough to clear it/cough it up UNTIL the chest tubes were removed. I was released the same day that my chest tubes were removed. I have 4 scar/stitched sites on the side of my chest. It has now been 2 weeks since my surgery and I take Vicodin once every 8 hours. I am also taking Milk of Mag­ne­sia every other day (one table­spoon) to pre­vent impacted bowels and con­sti­pa­tion from the Vicodin. I can not stress the impor­tance of taking stool soft­ners and milk of mag­ne­sia imme­di­ately fol­low­ing surgery and until you are totally off of the nar­cotics. I have a dull numb heav­i­ness in my chest and my stiched wounds are very sore. Since being home, I expe­ri­ence the most dif­fi­culty with sleep­ing. I have yet to find a com­fort­able posi­tion to sleep in and I some­times wake up gasp­ing for air as though I’m chok­ing. I can’t sleep on either side because it feels as though my lungs/heart are shift­ing from side to side and are to heavy. I can’t really sleep on my back because I don’t feel that my lung can handle lying on my back. I don’t get any sleep at night and sleep 2-3 hours 2 times during the day. My stitches will be removed on Monday and I am con­cerned about the numb/tingly feel­ing I feel on my right breast/chest area. It’s too early to com­ment on long-​term pain and numb­ness, but every­thing has been man­age­able so far. I’m wor­ried about long-​term issues but know that I can only take one day at a time and think pos­i­tive thoughts.

    Posted by Tezira at 5am on 13.02.05

  54. I am now 30 , i just spent one and a half weeks in an emer­gency care hos­pi­tal with this spon­ta­neous pnemoth­o­rax, what a way to spend ones “30” , yuck. i was con­sid­ered healthy,and ener­getic i am 5ft5 and fairly healthy at 135 to 140 lbs. i never felt any­thing so painful or scary in my life. my sym­pa­thetic under­stand­ing for any who share this. and may it never happen to us again.

    Posted by Tammy at 11pm on 14.02.05

  55. I dont know about the rest of you, but after one severe case of spon­tan­ious pneu­moth­o­rax I will not live with another. I was in a car wreck a year and a half ago and to this day I live in pain from it. Like you people describe. Some morn­ings I wake up and roll over and stand up and it hurts so bad. Espe­cially the first large gasp of air. The actual sad thing is that It was not my fault, and I would rather pass away if it came back to haunt me. You people are strong to take this more than once, as I am not. My reflec­tions may not be pos­i­tive but its how I feel, and every day of this pain is no way to live. It is nice to know that other people have been through this. Though I ques­tion, why did it hurt so much during the tube removal? The tube was huge, and stitched in. And I still hurt from it and I read that others still hurt and I just ques­tion the mean­ing of this pain-​filled exis­tence. Please reply or flame to kefkarules@netzero.com I’d love to hear how to cope with this dis­ease called “life-now”.

    Posted by dave h at 8pm on 17.02.05

  56. I think I am cur­rently on my 6th or so Pnuemo in 6 years. I have just turned 27 half asian and white, tall and thin. Have had a chest tube 4 times, and a “staple” pro­ce­dure a few years back(removing a quar­ter sized bleb) that ‘should’ have cor­rected the prob­lem.. darn the bad luck. It was back the fol­low­ing year on the same(left) lung again, luck­ily absorb­ing itself. Now it has been almost 2yrs with­out an episode and I unforunately rec­og­nize I have a small pnuemo again. Cur­rently with­out insur­ance I am going see if it will absorb itself.

    I know you might not be doc­tors.. but have spoken to a few.. ***HERE IS MY QUES­TION: Has anyone heard when they occur, is there any way to help it reab­sorbe itself. (i.e. Lots of rest, inn­ac­tiv­ity, eating alot/a little, fluids, home reme­dies, sug­ges­tions, etc?)

    *****PART 2: Does anyone know of an insur­ance com­pany that will cover this prob­lem even though it is pre-​existing?? (I know they will not cover it when it is occur­ing at this moment in time) This would be invalu­able information.

    p.s. This has been a great com­fort to actu­ally hear from others with this problem(I really wasn’t sure about my docs explaina­tion) My heart and spirit goes out to you. God Bless

    Posted by Matt at 12pm on 06.05.05

  57. I am a 22yr female tall and thin I suf­fered from a sp 2 weeks ago on moth­ers day. Before bed i expe­ri­enced a bad pain in my left side think­ing i had pulled a muscle i ignored it until morn­ing, through­out the night had short­ness of breath and when woke up was much worse then I really started to worry i was admit­ted into ER and after a few hrs of exam­i­na­tion and then x-ray was deter­mined i had a sp in the left lung 90% col­lapsed i stayed in hosp for 5 days with a tube before my lung rein­flated after the tube was removed it went down 5% then next day was fully infalted i got to go home. I am so scared that this will happen again can any1 tell me dose it nor­mally occur in the same lung or the other? I have been told ive got 20-30% chance of this hap­pen­ing again, since i have been home i expe­ri­ence some chest pains in both sides i am just assum­ing this is from the tube or nerves? I sym­pa­thise for all you other suf­fer­ers and wish you all best of luck. Ps i was smoker not really heavy but have given up now.

    Posted by Jenny at 5am on 24.05.05

  58. My hus­band was diag­nosed with sp 4 days ago. So far his recov­ery isnt so great. He has had vis­i­ble swelling on his outer chest and has just called to inform me that his neck and arm are begin­ning to swell. Has anyone else expe­ri­enced these prob­lems? And if so what hap­pened and what treat­ment was applied? He has had a second larger tube inserted just under his nipple, it is attached to a drainage type thing. When they tried to remove it his lung col­lapsed again within 15 min­utes. Has anyone had this happen to them?

    Posted by Tracey at 3pm on 13.06.05

  59. Hi Every­one!
    It feels like I know all of you already. I am a 20 year old female. I had my first SP 6 months ago, and again a week ago. I have been doing some of my own research trying to figure out just why this keeps hap­pen­ing. I know there is no known cause, but do any of you know what kind of research they are doing for this?? (It seems pretty rare.)When it hap­pened the first time, they let it re-​inflate itself, and now this time, I had a chest tube. For those of you that have had surgery for this, would you rec­om­mend it? I do not want to wake up every day won­der­ing if today is the day it hap­pens again. Please feel free to post your reply here, or if you have any other info please e-mail me at, sarahstewart44@hotmail.com. I will put you all in my prayers. Take care!

    Posted by Sarah at 3am on 17.06.05

  60. Hello my name is Linda I am a 32 yr. old female. 5’3 129# I have had 3 phneu­moth­o­rax that I have been hos­pi­tal­ized for. Feb. “04” I under­went lung surgery on my right lung w/ 3 chest tubes, jan.”05” another phneu­moth­o­rax another chest tube, and again June “05” another phneumothorax,2 more chest tubes… Always on my right lung. they are related to my men­strual cycle and they call it repeat cata­me­nial phneumothorax/endometriosis. I have now been put on a med­ica­tion called Lupron which will put me through 6 months of menopause… Very expen­sive drug, can only been taken for 6 months, and only once in your life­tim they seem to think this may stop it…??? I can only hope!!! Any feed­back would be Won­der­ful, and I wish every­one the best of luck and keep you chin Up!! LInda June 28 2005

    Posted by linda d MI. at 4am on 29.06.05

  61. Hi, I had surgery on my left lung at UPMC St. Mar­garet in Pitts­burgh on June 30th. I was dis­charged on July 3rd, had a follow up appoint­ment with my sur­geon on July 12th, and he said I was clear to fly. I couldn’t believe it, so I flew home 5 days later. He said that it is normal to have pains even 6 months after this. I had pleu­rade­cis, and par­tial pluerec­tomy, VATS, and all that stuff. I was just won­der­ing if other people still expe­ri­ence random chest pains and back pains and how long I should expect to feel this way. Some­times I get a sharp pain on my left side for a brief moment, and I also get pain in my back. How long will this last? If anyone has any advice, please let me know. Thanks for lis­ten­ing everyone.

    Posted by Bill Hipple at 4am on 18.07.05

  62. Sorry to hear about all of you suf­fer­ing this scary thing. I have never even heard of phneu­moth­o­rax until 2 months ago, some­one hit me in the driver side, not my fault in anyway but when the ambu­lance came, i said i felt ok except i kind of had sharp pains in my chest and my left arm was tin­gling a little. They took me to the hos­pi­tal and said i had phneu­mon­tho­rax, very small but i have some air in my chest cavity, since then they have taken 3 catscans and it has not gotten any smaller, they haven’t done any­thing, it doesn’t really bother me but a couple times a week it really hurts but goes away when i relax. I can’t fly, i can’t work out or lift any­thing heavy they say, I am not com­plain­ing but do you think it will heal itself or get worse? I just want to get back to normal with­out wor­ry­ing what is going to happen with these pains that feel like pulled mus­cles cramps. And can you usu­ally fly anyway even though the rup­ture is small.

    Posted by Sissy at 7pm on 20.07.05

  63. Hi I am a 18 year old female,and Some friends and I were on the way to watch a movie out of town. All of a sudden I had the worst pain ever in my chest and my upper back. It got so bad that I made my friends turn around and take me home. I Then went to the hos­pi­tal and I told them my symp­toms they did an x-ray of my chest and they told me that I was find that I prob­a­bly had a pinched nerve and they sent me home. The next day I was still in a great deal of pain, my phone rang a couple of hours later and it was the hos­pi­tal they told my mom to bring me back to the hos­pi­tal as fast as pos­si­ble and that they looked at my x-ray again and My lung had col­lasped. When­ever I got there my phneu­mon­thrax had gotten bigger. They immed­i­taly put a chest tube in. That was the worst thing ever and so painful. I just hope that it never hap­pens again!! I am so wor­ried that it will and wonder if there is any­thing that i can do to pre­vent it!!

    Posted by Ashley at 3pm on 23.08.05

  64. Hey Ashley I had a pnemoth­o­rax to back in may you will see my com­ment posted above 24th May And I agree its the worst thing thats ever happen to me. I under­stand how you feel won­der­ing will it ever happen again. I felt the same for few months still some­times but not as much and the shock i think was worse than any­thing think­ing why did it happen to me. but after few months you dont worry as much well i dont. Know i think i cant keep won­der­ing for the next few years, i just think if it dose happen again i will be bit more pre­pared. I wish you the best of luck and fast recovery.

    Posted by Jenny at 1am on 25.08.05

  65. After read­ing all these posts I was trying to com­pare other peoples’ post-​op pain to mine and it seems most people have pain no matter what pro­ce­dure they’ve had.
    I had 8 col­lapses, 7 lead­ing to chest tubes, a pluerode­sis, thorec­tomy (? the one where they excise a bit of your lung? ) and have had great suc­cess for the last two years, with no recur­rances. But what both­ers me is the knife-​like pain in my side, and also that “sinking feeling”, the pain that seems to be in the back middle of my body. I was won­der­ing if people could describe them­selves relat­ing to recur­ring pain. I believe that most of the aches and stab­bing feel­ings come from the pluerode­sis, but im not sure, it might just be a com­bi­na­tion of every­thng. Take, for instance, Todd (Posted by Todd · May 26, 2004 04:08 AM) who com­plains of ‘post-thorocatomy’ pain syn­drome. He says it comes from the damage to the ‘intercostal’ nerves from the place­ment of the chest tubes. From his descrip­tion it sounds like he is hooked on painkillers, the pain must be so bad (unless hes just an addict). My pains cer­taintly are excru­ci­at­ing some­times, but it seems they quick out­bursts that come and go, some­times in min­utes or hours. Any sim­il­iar­i­ties out there that people know any con­nec­tions to?

    I hope every­body is feel­ing better now. -John

    Posted by John at 9pm on 14.09.05

  66. Hi every­one,
    I had a SP on July 27, 2005. 100lbs, 5’6”, 32 year old Female, right lung col­lapsed. After doing some research, I wonder if I have Cata­me­nial Pneu­moth­o­rax versus Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax. Has anyone researches this? It occurs in women and in their right lung.

    Posted by nita at 3am on 20.09.05

  67. Hi I had an SP 19th Sept 05 got sudden sharp pain in left side that went through my back and down my arm. The hos­pi­tal ini­tally stated stress but a scan revealed the SP. I am a 29 year old female and was a smoker till this hap­pened. I was led to believe that this only hap­pens to smok­ers but I can see from the mes­sage board thats not the case. I had a sim­i­lar inci­dent sev­eral months ago but was never xrayed or scanned the doctor assumed a chest infec­tion was on the way. I found it dif­fi­cult to get answers from doctor about what it means and what other sympthoms I may expe­ri­ence. I have been very low in energy and reg­u­larly feel full of phlegm. Is this connected?

    Posted by sharon lambert at 2pm on 25.09.05

  68. I also live with pain from my surg­eries, that I had 5 yrs. ago. I have tried 4 (series)of Ther­a­peu­tic nerve blocks, 5-day trail Spinal cord stim­u­la­tion, and a Neu­roab­la­tion (remove 3 nerve alone 3 ribs) and I have been on pain killers. But I would like to share this web­site with all of you that are in my world of pain!!!! I am going to try this out!!! I will be writ­ing to let you all know if it worked for me!! :) Enjoy http://​www.​heal​pain.​net/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​o​r​d​-​i​n​s​t​.html

    Posted by Sandy at 8am on 27.09.05

  69. Hi every­one, I had a total col­lapse of my right lung 2 wks ago and had chest drain for 4 days. Xray said lung had rein­flated so could go home from hosp. I am so scared its hap­pened again coz I have the same pain and find it hard to breath when walk­ing or lying down, well I cant lie down coz of the pain as well. The only dif­fer­ence is that on the side of the col­lapse, im very swollen and sore, my breast hurts like hell and so does my under­arm. Is this normal, and do you think Ive got a col­lapsed lung again, it was totally col­lapsed before, Im get­ting so down and scared to go to bed at night, and cry most nights now. thanks for lis­ten­ing, I feel bit better read­ing this site, and my heart goes out to all of you as I under­stand your paid and worry. Kazzxx

    Posted by Karen at 1am on 19.10.05

  70. My son who is 16, 5’11 and 130 lbs recently has two SP’s three weeks apart. Both times he was sit­ting in Sci­ence class at school. At the emer­gency room, we sat in a treat­ment room for over 3 hours before we saw a Dr. By then his color had returned and the pain sub­sided. The M.D. said the x-ray looked normal and he thought it was a muscle strain that went into a spasm and pressed on the rib cage and we were given scripts for Vicadon and Motrin 800’s. The next day I get an early phone call from the E.R. Dr. asking how my son was. I said OK. and he said “no he’s not, I missed some­thing on the x-ray” and explained what a pnue­moth­o­rax was. I took him to his Dr.who fol­lowed up with another x-ray who said if it hap­pens again get him to my office, not ER. Three weeks to the day the school calls again. We get him to his Dr. who calls the hos­pi­tal for admis­sion, x-ray, CAT scan, a lung spe­cial­ist and a lung sur­geon. They were all there from there own pri­vate prac­tices within the hour. He had surgery 1 week ago today to remove the blebs in the left lung and the abra­sive pro­ce­dure for the lung to adhere. He was on mor­phine for 24 hours after surgery. When the Dr. removed the chest tube and changed to a milder longer last­ing painkiller he made a remark­able recov­ery. So far so good but it’s only been a week. The sur­geon said it’s 90% effec­tive. The other 10% would be blebs that are too small or unde­vel­oped. When he flys he will need an x-ray 1 week before­hand. The Dr. says “you just got to live your life, go about things in your normal way.” He told my son he would NEVER be able to smoke because of this con­di­tion nor would he be able to scuba dive. He plays short­stop on the base­ball team and it would break his heart if that was inter­rupted by this. He wasn’t able to finish his season with the golf team because as soon as he got the OK to resume activ­ity, the 2nd one hap­pened. As a parent it it heart­break­ing to see your child suffer with this. We are trying to be pos­i­tive and opti­mistic and take things one day at a time.The thing I find strange is both times he was sit­ting in the same class,almost the same time(mid-morning) and our Michi­gan weather made a dras­tic change in the baro­met­ric pres­sure chang­ing from sunny and warm to sud­denly cold, damp and cloudy. Is there a connection?

    Posted by kathy at 3am on 22.10.05

  71. In April 2005 my life was going great. I was doing what I wanted to do. I smoked cig­a­rettes and smoked mar­i­juana but never thought to quit because it was the cool thing to do and I liked it. Well on April 22 all that changed, I had my first pneu­moth­o­rax. It was small and did not require a chest tube. My doctor even had doubts that it was spon­ta­neous, because I had a cold for 3 weeks prior and this could have been a result of that. So I fig­ured I could return to smok­ing with­out a prob­lem. Well every­thing was going good again until August. Just before school started this year I had another one. It too was small and didn’t require a chest tube, but now surgery was being brought up. I knew then it was a con­di­tion I had but still had yet to drop the bad habits. Two weeks later I had a third pneu­moth­o­rax and now my surgery was to be imme­di­ate. In mid Sep­tem­ber I had my surgery and it was the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. I was in the hos­pi­tal for 7 days and home for a week and a half after that. I had smoked noth­ing and was hoping to keep it that way, but after I got back into my reg­u­lar rou­tine I started again and I do not know why, it is incred­i­bly stupid and life threat­en­ing but for some reason that does not reg­is­ter. Cig­a­rettes and mar­i­juana have taken con­trol of me and even with my con­di­tion i have yet to quit. I am really making a stand now to be smart about things and have some respect for myself but it is hard. What is sad is I just turned 17 and I have my whole life to live but if I con­tinue to be stupid I won’t have that chance

    Posted by David Williams at 3am on 27.10.05

  72. my name is andrea. i’m 30. i’ve had 4 lung col­laspes in my past (not one since around 6 yrs ago). I used to smoke a pack a day, quit after this hap­pened for 4 stright years and started again 1 yr ago (1/2 pack a week). i’ve given it up again, 1 day ago. i’m cur­rently wear­ing my Chest Foun­da­tion Love Your Lungs bracelet. i can NOT believe how dis­gust­ingly addict­ing cig­a­rettes are. i love myself a lot, how could i do this to myself?? i’ve been so abu­sive (and lucky) to my body lately. i don’t ever want to go thru what i went thru all those yrs ago. i’m short of breathe often and get so scared that i’m doing SO much damage, yet i con­tin­ued to smoke. i wish cig­a­rettes were ille­gal. i think it’s such bull**** that they are so avail­able. anyway, i decided to go on this site today just to con­nect to others like myself who have gone thru sp. i’m so ashamed that i ever went back to cig­a­rettes. wish me luck. if anyone has any­thing inspir­ing to say please reach me at: amark@phx.com

    Posted by Andrea at 2pm on 03.11.05

  73. Has anyone heard of get­ting a col­lapsed lung from a cor­ti­zone injec­tion? I have found that the hole in my lung took a lot longer to heal because of the cor­ti­zone. I am now three weeks post-​accident and it’s been about 1 1/2 weeks since I had my chest tube out. Is it normal to still have this dry irri­tat­ing cough?

    Some­one else on this forum asked about how to help the pneu­moth­o­rax to absorb quicker. Sup­ple­men­tal oxygen is the answer.

    Posted by Patti Burnett at 1am on 06.11.05

  74. Hi I am respond­ing to a note Posted by Patri­cia Brown · March 28, 2004 02:37 AM. I was won­der­ing if you heard any good news. I had 2 sp and I had a surgery done this time. The Dr.s said I will be okay in 6 weeks now its 12 weeks still I am get­ting some pain and dis­com­fort like you. The Dr.s claim every­thing is normal. Is there any real cure for this or should we just live with this..? If there is any devel­op­ments on your side pls do inform me. Even if some­one else is in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion pls help us out.

    Posted by Ben at 7pm on 07.11.05

  75. My wife of just over then years is in hos­pi­tal tonight after her left lung col­lapsed. (pnue­moth­o­racic) She’s 47 yr old and has been a life­long smoker. This, accom­pa­nied by a per­sis­tant phlemy cough, appar­ently led up to the inci­dent. It was pure terror for me watch­ing her turn­ing blue after the chest tube was inserted. Appar­ently the lungs can some­times start to fill with fluid. I can only imag­ine what “she” was think­ing at the time. They have her mor­phine and she dozed off before I left the hos­pi­tal (I’ve been up for 24 hrs) so I’m kinda hoping she doesn’t remem­ber the grief her poor lil body went through. I had no idea of the insid­i­ous­ness of this com­pli­ca­tion and am only now learn­ing of it in fur­ther detail via the net. My heart goes out to you all who have been through this and also to those whose loved ones have had the unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence. I’m still shak­ing. Sorry for blath­er­ing on. I guess I just had to get it off my chest, so to speak. Rob

    Posted by Rob at 6am on 10.11.05

  76. Hello. I am 46 years old and weigh 200lbs. I suf­fered an SP Novem­ber 2002 with my left lung. It com­pletely col­lapsed. I was in the hos­pi­tal about 5 days after a pleurec­tomy. All was good. I then suf­fered a second com­plete SP this May (2005). This time a VATS Pleuridesis was rec­om­mended (very strongly). I had the Pleuridesis and was in the hos­pi­tal for 10 excru­ci­at­ingly boring days before being released. I was told the symp­toms, the weird numb spots, the occa­sional tight­ness in the chest, the feel­ing of the weight in the chest, would go away in ‘about 2 or 3 months.’ Well it is now 6 months and the symp­toms are still around if mod­er­at­ing slowly. Brows­ing this site I am alarmed to find out the symp­toms may never go away. One of the strangest symp­toms I have is an extreme sen­si­tiv­ity to my skin on my chest where my sur­gi­cal cuts are. It is very uncom­fort­able to wear shirts. It just drives me nuts and I can’t wait to get home and go around shirt­less — and that does not make my wife happy. I just have ques­tion, has any­body come across an OTC drug (tylenol and advil are use­less) or ther­apy that helps with these symp­toms? I would appre­ci­ate any pos­i­tive response. It is a very exas­per­at­ing sit­u­a­tion. I’ve also come to the con­clu­sion that the Pleuridesis pro­ce­dure is very crude — hope­fully the day is not too far off when Spont Pnuem can be treated in a more effec­tive manner.

    Posted by Christopher Zarrella at 1am on 11.11.05

  77. My last SP was March last year.It took about a year for the pain to go away.Lately i have started get­ting pain again.Is it pos­si­ble that it could be the Bara­met­ric Pres­sure that could cause the pain to flair up now and then.If anyone has any thoughts on this would be appreciated.Thanks,Richard

    Posted by Richard at 4am on 16.11.05

  78. Heyas!

    I have also suf­fered from SP. Pneu­moth­o­rax back in August.Which at first I thought was maybe pneu­moa­nia, and worked for 3 days before I couldn’t stand the pain any­more, and seen a doctor.He pre­scribed an antibi­otic and a chest x-ray.Turned out I had a 15% col­lapsed Left lung.I also Had the Chest tube for 4 days.Week and a half later I had a another in the same lung.
    A month later, and I am still having the chest pains, but only when I lay on my left side which seems to irri­tate it.
    I recently seen a doctor about the pain, and he says it pleurisy (inflammation).He prec­sribed 400 to 600 mg’s of Ibuprofen.Which I was amazed that it worked better then pain pills!
    I Take 400 mg’s before bed, and 24 hours later I just slightly start to feel the pain, and it’s time take them again.
    I hope this helps some of you are also suf­fer­ing from the pains.From what I have read in this forum I am in for a long run with this also.

                                                  Kelly

    Posted by Kelly at 4am on 20.11.05

  79. Hello all,
    I am a 23 year old tall thin male from Ire­land.
    I have had a smon­ta­neous pnemoth­o­rax occur on both my lungs in the past two years and had surgery done on both lungs sim­i­lar to that described by: “Patrick · Jan­u­ary 28, 2005 07:24 AM”.
    First oper­a­tion was in August ‘04 and the second in Jan­u­ary of this year.
    How­ever, in the last couple of days I’ve began to feel slightly short of breath and have a pain on the right hand side of my back - close to where the surgery was done. My worry is that I have a 1-hour flight to Eng­land Friday morn­ing. I am too afraid to go to a doctor because I’m afraid of hear­ing the worst and really do not want to miss out on this trip (I missed a hol­i­day that I had booked in August ‘04 due to this prob­lem).
    Does any­body know what is the worst that could happen if I was to fly, assum­ing that I do have a small pneu­moth­o­rax again? Will it just make the pain slightly worse or would it be more seri­ous??
    Thanks for your help,
    Stephen.

    Posted by Stephen at 11am on 22.11.05

  80. Hey all,
    I am a 25 year old female who’s had 2 spon­ta­neous pnemo’s.
    My first one hap­pened on my left lung for no reason. The doctor said that it nor­mally hap­pens to tall thin girls. Heres the thing, Im 5’3 and 115lbs. I wouldnt say that i am tall or very thin. The doctor never did any­thing about it, he said my lung would heal on its own, because i was young. A year and a half later, i finally forgot about it and was begin­ing not to always be afraid of it hap­pen­ing again, well i was wrong because it col­lapsed again. Same side. I had to have a pleu­ro­di­sis and they also cut a bleb out that was attached to my lung. I was in the hos­pi­tal for 1 week. If that wasnt bad enough i got a hos­pi­tal infec­tion while i was in the hos­pi­tal, called C-Diff.
    Its been almost a year later, and I still feel pain off and on. I’m afraid of the right one col­laps­ing. I’ve flown since but i am always afraid when I do. It has def­i­nitely changed my life. Hope­fully one day they will figure out why this hap­pens, or find a per­mi­nent cure.

    Posted by Esther at 3am on 23.11.05

  81. Hi i am 23 years old and had sp about 3 years ago but luck­ily i havent had it revisit, its a painful thing to go throuh, i am flying to sydney tom­mor­row and am panic­ing a lil bit, its only a 4 hour flight. is it ok to fly…

    Brad

    Posted by Brad at 3am on 23.11.05

  82. Its nice to see i am not the only one to expe­ri­ence a spon­ta­neous pneo­moth­o­rax. I am 5’10’, 145 lbs, my expe­ri­ence hap­pened in 2003 at the age of 16 after a day of foot­ball prac­tice where there was no hit­ting so nobody knew what was wrong. i had extreme excru­ci­at­ing pain in my shoul­ders and chest and i could not take a deep breath. after wait­ing in the ER for 4 hours, one nurse real­ized i had an SP after she saw my chest not inflate when i took a breath. The doctor told me i had a full col­lapse of my left lung and a par­tial of my right. i had a chest tube put in and was in the hos­pi­tal for 3 days. i was told it could happen again and no more than 3 weeks later i had a par­tial col­lapse of both but it did not require a tube. Since then i havent had any­thing seri­ous but every­one in a while i feel a sharp pain. i always worry during the cold months b/c that is when it hap­pened and when i feel most likely to happen again. I hope their is a way where i dont have to worry about it hap­pen­ing b/c that was the most painful thing i ever had in my life.

    Posted by Bryant at 6am on 30.11.05

  83. Im british but living in Greece, and about 2months ago was admit­ted to Hos­pi­tal due to com­plete SP on my right lung. I guess im in the run­ning, being very skinny and above aver­age height, but im a 29 year old lady. Yes, i smoke and hate it, but its a drug that im unable to quit…. The thing with me thou is that i refused the chest drain thing and just took oxygen for 1 week at hos­pi­tal, and beleive it or not my lung returned to full size. And my Greek docter was really shocked that i refused this painful pro­ce­dure and actu­ally healed alone. Ive since been on planes and yes, still smoke and yes im having pains again and im really scared. Is there a big chance im having another, due to my pains. Why is noone research­ing this con­di­tion and its links to age, and smok­ing etc. Its so scarey and i hope every­one the best.

    Posted by Carly at 1pm on 04.12.05

  84. Hi Jack and fellow ‘sufferers’, you’re all an inspi­ra­tion (even the not-​so-​optimistic ones). I have had numer­ous pneu­moth­o­raxes over the last 15yrs, left/right, complete/partial, tension/spontaneous. I am also a nurse, which has helped when talk­ing with the medics as they always seem eager to impart their knowl­edge, but for the life in me I cannot get much con­sis­tency from them. To answer some pre­vi­ous ques­tions though; com­mer­cial flying should be ok, though we should be wary of any pres­surised envi­ron­ment, avoid jet-​fighters etc. swim­ming good/ scuba and free-​diving bad. Excer­cis­ing good/ smok­ing bad. But mostly we all have two con­cerns on our minds. 1/ Will it happen again? 2/ Oh the pain. People stare at me agog when I liken the pain to a six inch knife being plunged into my chest, then removed with the same haste as it entered. There is also the dull aching pain, or the one that feels like my wife sat on me (not in a good way), but my per­sonal favorite is the one I can’t find. It seems to move when­ever I pin­point it. My biggest fear is that my lungs will con­spire against me and both give up together in some sick syn­chro­nised col­lapse( Not unlike torvill and dean at the con­clu­sion to the Bolero). I did about 10 yrs of wor­ry­ing, but have recently become so much more philo­soph­i­cal about it. I always have a toilet bag ready and never under­es­ti­mate the bore­dom of hos­pi­tals (mag­a­zines, i-pod, puz­zles etc). Those close to me know what to expect. Though I never take the next bit of advice, and like alot of you I put off going to hos­pi­tal ‘til the last minute, don’t leave it. Seek med­ical atten­tion. If a pnue­moth­o­rax is left the pres­sure build up in the chest cavity can crush the res­pi­ra­tory and car­dio­vas­cu­lar system…………..I now wake up each morn­ing and think,”My lung could go today”. this thought is fol­lowed by a mil­lion other things that COULD happen. Our lives are full of COULDS and WHAT IFS. What it DOES do for me now is help me appre­ci­ate each day. Good luck to all of you. We all share a jour­ney and I am with you all.

    Posted by Chris Tearne at 3pm on 07.12.05

  85. I am cur­rently at home recu­per­at­ing from my second oper­a­tion at Hare­field, the ‘keyhole’ video assisted op in Feb­ru­ary didn’t work, and I ended up spend­ing over three weeks in the local gen­eral hos­pi­tal with my fourth pneu­moth­o­rax, wait­ing for con­sul­tants to come back from hol­i­day and arrange my trans­fer. Had to go round the M25 in the rush hour traf­fic on a hos­pi­tal minibus with the chest drain in - not the best experience!

    The chest con­sul­tant at the local hos­pi­tal told me off in jan­u­ary for stay­ing away from hos­pi­tal for so long each time it hap­pened. I told him I had had sev­eral false alarms, because I get the same chest pains just before men­stru­a­tion, and the A&E doc­tors were get­ting fed up with my visits. He then decided that I might have a cata­me­nial pneu­moth­o­rax. How­ever, although I fit the pro­file for this rather than the ‘blebs’ related sp, each time the col­lapse is on the left side, and not the right. Does anyone know of an inci­dence of cata­me­nial pneu­moth­o­rax on the left? All the inter­net sites say it is ‘invariably’ on the right. The sur­geon at Hat­field doesn’t believe I have got this, he is quite happy to carry on patch­ing me up as nec­es­sary. I pointed out that rather than being tall, thin, young and male, I am short fat old and female.

    The con­sul­tant at the local hos­pi­tal referred me to the gynae­col­o­gist, and scans reveal that I have ‘chocolate ovaries’ - endemetrio­sis cov­ered with cysts, appar­ently. This seems to show up quite a bit on med­ical sites relat­ing to cata­men­tial pneu­moth­o­rax. Anyway, this week I had my first pellet of hor­mones implanted in my stom­ach to try to shock my system into the menopause. (I am at about the right age for it, but so far noth­ing has hap­pened nat­u­rally). What I am hoping is that this treat­ment will work, but if my lung prob­lems are not related to men­stru­a­tion, I am going to go through all the menopausal symp­toms and then still have to fear another pneu­moth­o­rax! Read­ing the remarks from other people, it is rather wor­ry­ing that some people have all the oper­a­tions, but the prob­lem still comes back! I can relate to the con­stant worry that it might happen again. At the moment I can’t plan any­thing with­out fac­tor­ing in what might happen if I have to go back into hos­pi­tal suddenly.

    I was also very wor­ried about all the people (pre­sum­ably Amer­i­cans) who can’t afford to go back to hos­pi­tal. My hus­band wants us to go back to Amer­ica for a hol­i­day next year, but even if I am well enough to fly, I can’t risk going into hos­pi­tal, as I assume our travel insur­ance won’t cover me for a pneu­moth­o­rax. It makes me even more deter­mined to sup­port and fight for our national health service.

    Posted by Vivienne at 3pm on 08.12.05

  86. Hey, i found all these sto­ries wile search­ing on google about sp’s. My story is pretty much the same as every­one elses, which leads me to believe that there are not many vari­ables in the fac­tors for sp’s. back in 2003 at the age of 14 while in alge­bra class taking a test i had a sudden sharp pain in my back and as i con­tin­ued taking the test not think­ing much of it, my arm and neck began to hurt also. I thought it was just a pinched nerve or some­thing sim­u­lar to that so i went on through­out the rest of the school day with excru­si­at­ing pain that i could not seem to releave. I went home after school and told my par­ents that i had some pain in my back that was very bad, so i took some tylonal, which did not work. so we sced­uled an appointe­ment for three days later. so three days goes by and we get and x-ray and they dis­cover that i had an sp. I was imme­di­atly rushed by ambu­lance to Saint Mary’s hos­pi­tal in Rochester, MN near where i live, and got an chest tube put on my left side, i ended up stay­ing in for a whole week before i got out. A year later i had another one but this was not as bad, and healed on its own. but then soon after i had one that required another chest tube, and prompted Dr. Moyer, who is my doctor for deal­ing with this issue to sug­gest surgery. since school was still going we decided to wait till summer vaca­tion in June, lit­er­ally three days after the end of school, and i had surgery on my right side acually because A CT scan revealed blebs on my right side. After the surgery i got to go home after 3 days and after about a month i started work­ing for our land­lord, which was hard work, lift­ing heavy loads, refin­ish­ing floors and i never had a single prob­lum the whole summer, then in 2005 after school had stared i sud­denly had that famil­iary feel­ing that we all know, but it realy both­ers me what caused it, i was lift­ing a wind­shield for a car, which is only 30 pounds at most, but i did all that hard work just a month ear­lier and had no trou­bles. as of right now i am expe­ri­enc­ing the back pain agian, and im not sure if i should go to the hos­pi­tal or not, it hasnt both­ered me much realy, but it seems to be get­ting worse, i guess im just sick of all the x-rays, CT scans, I.V. lines, chest tubes, sick­ness from meds, bordom in hos­pi­tals, and all the other crap that goes along with this. I realy fear having to do the surgery where they cut you open on your back, my surgery was just the chem­i­cal stuff the put in there, to scar up the tissue. My sim­pa­thy goes out too all of those who are expe­ri­enc­ing this ter­ri­ble disease/condition what­ever it is. This whole ordeal has made me realy change my out­look on life though, making me appre­ci­ate some of the smaller things in life. I guess one thing that it has realy changed is my out­look on other dis­eases and media atten­tion they get, every­time i hear about cancer, or aids or anyother dis­ease, i dont realy think of it in such a sim­pa­thetic way as i once did, for instance in our school we have a girl who has cancer and has gone through all the cemo-​therapy and every now and then the school has a fundraiser for her family, but i find my self less sim­pa­thetic than every­one else around me, its a weird feel­ing. I hope this all turns out good for me and everone else on here so we can lead happy, healthy, normal lives [END]

    Posted by Thomas Fortney at 5am on 10.12.05

  87. Hey all ..
    Ive just had this- best of health - in hos­pi­tal for 8 days. Suc­tion and talc never worked but after read­ing, it seems that surgery is the best, in the long run. how­ever, im only out 3 weeks so i dont know - im in pain, my lung feels like it moves around in there. lack of breathe, com­pare to what i had and sharp pains where the surgery was. I thnik maybe they smacked a nerve, no idea - im bank­ing on this being part of the heal­ing process… that in 3 months - this i gone.. this stuff sucks, big time - ive never been in so much freakin pain - i cant believe people deal­ing with 3 or more of these, God bless you… i think next time this hap­pens, ima just get totally tanked and deal with it the next day or some­thing, omg, this is the worst pain ever… im set to fly in march and appar­nently thats “okay” from the chief sur­geon - in addi­tion, he said my right lung shoudlnt col­lapse aagain, sounds liked ever.. never again but the odds are my left could, im won­dreing if i bulk up and eat every­thing in site if that will stop it??????? i cna do that - i love food but im only 124lbs, i was 150!!! lost 25 in the hospital… now ima tooth­pick and if i lose another 25 then im 100!!! omg i cant deal with that.

    Posted by martin at 10pm on 26.12.05

  88. Hi
    I am a 34 year old while female from South Africa. I suffer from SP and would like to know if there is any­body out there who has re-​located to a lower alti­tude due to SP. We live at a very high alti­tude and won­dered if it would help to relocate.

    I am ter­ri­fied of nee­dles and am so scared that I will have to have my lung drained. So far I have not had any oper­a­tions or drains. I have had SP for about 3 years but it seems to be ongo­ing - always that nag­ging pain in the left lung. The pain and dis­com­fort vary all the time. So I never really know if it is just aching due to pre­vi­ous damage or if it is because the lung has collapsed.

    At the moment I am being treated for asthma which seems to be help­ing a bit - when it’s cold I suffer the worst.

    I have a con­tin­u­ous cough and have to clear my throat all the time - do any of you also suffer from that. I don’t know if its related to the SP or if its some­thing else???

    Sheena
    stealthsecurity@futurenet.co.za

    Posted by Sheena at 2pm on 29.12.05

  89. This Feb­ru­ary 14th will be my two year mark after 4 surg­eries on my left lung. Lung col­lapsed during work, felt like I broke a rib but con­tin­ued work­ing. Got some sleep that night woke up next day, Valen­tines Day, and went to ER.
    Sec­onds after X-rays,I was taken into a room where they inserted a tube the diam­e­ter of a pen in my side and extracted the air out of my chest, that sucked! There afer I was told I would be out in 3 days, as it turns out when taken off suc­tion my lung col­lapsed again on the third day. First chest tube was taken out and larger tube(diameter of a Quar­ter) was re-​inserted and I was placed back on suc­tion. 2nd week in hos­pi­tal they took me off suc­tion and again it col­lapsed. Shortly after the sur­geons per­formed a blood patch,so you ask what is a blood patch? It is when they draw a quart of blood from your arm and inject it into your lung, that sucked! Well that did not work so it was rec­om­mended that I have surgery, and 30 sta­ples later, across the top of my left lung, I was released after my 3 week stay.I have not had it as bad as some but do under­stand every­ones suf­fer­ing and pain. My respect and sym­pa­thy goes out to evry­one here, good luck all.

    Posted by Louie at 5pm on 30.12.05

  90. What up sufferers…

    I am 25, man, and thin. I had a ‘small’ SP in novem­ber 04. Got it whilst in a car on my way to see some live music. Though I was in pain, I danced, smoked a few bifters, and drank. The next morn­ing i was f**ked. I took myself to emer­gency at the hos­pi­tal. Was seen about 30 mins later. I couldnt breathe right for a week or so and was told it’d heal and there was a 30% chance i’d get it again. I’ve never smoked cig­a­rettes and have not smoked any­thing since this time. Had a next episode about a month later. It was not as bad. And have just had my 3rd. Got it after a night of bowl­ing, drink­inng, and falling. There have not been any reports of minor cases which makes it seem inevitable that i am gonna have trou­ble. If anyone is read­ing and has had a minor case, post up! I am gonna see the doc next week.

    Posted by Carlo at 8pm on 11.01.06

  91. i had thoro­catomny surgery,april 17th 2005 prior to that on april 1 st at the monroe hos­pi­tal i had 3 tubes inserted in me 1 rsting on a nerve,wow bad pain.after 13 days they found out all 3 tubes in the wrong place at that point i made them take me by ambu­lance to st marys in madi­son wis,thats where they did the thorocatomny.took 17 d ays for my lung to inflate,then home i lost 30 lbsi only weighed 159( drink your bost or ensure 4 times a day} i didnt.
    now 10 months later iams till on 2 pain pills a day,and ibrop­uferen twice a day,best thing­which i read in here is a heat­ing pad on low on hurt­ing area..
    i wonder how many more months a will hurt?
    shalom
    bucy

    Posted by bucky coplien at 5pm on 18.01.06

  92. hello every­one! i’m a 25 yr. old white male. weigh­ing in at 5’7, 130 lbs. a per­fect can­di­date for spon. pneu­moth­o­rax. i have had 2 s.p. the first when i was 20 & and the second at 23. the first was definetly more painful of the two. reason for that is because i woke up in the middle of the doctor trying to punc­ture a hole between my ribs to insert my chest tube! yeah, it sucked! hos­pi­tal­ized for one week, injected my lung with some chem­i­cal so it would never col­lapse again. it worked. released me from hos­pi­tal. three yrs. later my left lung col­lapsed! ain,t life grand! hos­pi­tal­ized again. no, i did not wake up in the middle of them push­ing that rod between my ribs again. i made sure to tell the doctor to pump as much demoral in me pos­si­ble before killing me! i did not want to expreience that again. hos­pi­tal­ized again for a week. now here i am 25 yrs. old about to be 26, wouldn’t you know i started having chest pains on my left side yes­ter­day! gee, wonder what that could be? though it was not painful enough to send me the e.r. i just hope my con­di­tion is not hered­i­tary. i have a daugh­ter, and i do not want her to expe­ri­ence the pain that i have.(sorry every­one, that we have expe­ri­enced!) well good luck to all of you! maybe some day we’ll all breathe easy!

    Posted by steven at 2am on 20.01.06

  93. Had some­thing called bul­lous emphy­sema in 2004. Had to have surgery fir it to resect the water sacs on the lungs. This was sup­pose to be a surgery that kept you in the hos­pi­tal for 4 to 5 days, I ended up being there for 31 days and in alot of pain. They sprayed the powder to cause adhe­sions on the lung to seal a tiny hole, well it even­tu­ally worked but damn the pain was abso­lut­ley unbear­able. Has been 2 year now ad I still have pain not as bad but some­days it is not pleas­ant. And I have days that I think I am having a heart attack because of the pressue,but all in all we cn feel very lucky to have lived with a dis­ease like this. At any­time both lungs can col­lapse and that is it so I thank God he was look­ing out for me. Has anyone out there had to battle with bul­lous emphy­sema? I’d like to hear your expe­ri­ence. Thanks for lis­ten­ing and good­luck to us all!!!!!

    Posted by rhonda forney at 5pm on 20.01.06

  94. I have now suf­fered my 2nd S.P at the age of 31 and 6ft2inches tall. The 1st episode resolved itself for­tu­nately but this time I had a needle to aspi­rate the prob­lem. I didnt think this would happen twice and I know its just one of things to which I seem a likely can­di­date but I cant help but think I am trig­ger­ing the prob­lem. I am a mod­er­ate smoker and have just taken up run­ning, a sport in which I excelled as a teenager but quit due to the dis­cov­ery of cig­a­rettes and alco­hol. I have also used recre­ational drugs since that era and wonder if any of these things could be account­able for my vul­ner­a­bil­ity to S.P I wonder if anyone has sim­i­lar thoughts or experiences.

    Posted by liam at 10am on 27.01.06

  95. hi liam im glad to know im not on my own. im a female of 21 5ft 7ins and weigh­ing 8st 2. i had my first spont phneoumath­o­rax at the end of oct 2005 my life has been hell ever since every 2 weeks in acci­dent and emer­gency with another one on the lef side. got a pre op date for the 14th nov 2 have a pleurec­tomy but on the 13th of nov my right side col­lapsed so instead of having sur­gary on my worst side (left) the one that had col­lapsed already 5 times since oct i had to have it on my right the one that was col­lapsed at that time. the sur­gary was hell,so painfull having 2 chest drains in an epidural and a catheter wasnt nice,then to top it i get infec­tion in my wounds. since being dis­charged from hos­pi­tal my left lung has col­lapsed another 3 times and im wait­ing for sur­gary on that side now which will be end of feb which im not­look­ing foward to, infact i have night­mares about it because i know what to expect now. i thought it was only me that got these col­lapsed lungs so my heart goes out to you and every­one else that suffers.

    Posted by sarah at 11pm on 27.01.06

  96. I’ve got a few answers for every­one. My SP was 14 years ago (1992) and I just decided today to search to see if anyone else has all these weird feel­ings this long after a surgery. Some­one above asked about ignor­ing it..bad idea…I tried for 3 months and my left side filled with fluid around my lung—to the point it kept me up at night gur­gling. The stabing pain went away after 1 week. I never really noticed a short­ness in breath but 3 months went by b/f I went to a doctor. I ended up w/ the abraisive surgery after 3 weeks wait­ing out the chest tubes that didn’t help. I still notice tin­gling/ numb­ness/ and some pop­ping type feel­ings but I haven’t had to go back yet. I also still cough and clear my throat on a reg­u­lar basis. I had the mis-​fortune of 10 days in ICU after my surgery but a lot of the recent people here act like it wasn’t that bad for them??? Maybe it’s got better since 92’. My real con­cern is I’ve only had this one on my left side and was look­ing for pos­i­tive info from people who’ve had no fur­ther trou­ble. I’m start­ing to feel a little wor­ried to see so many people going thru this on a reg­u­lar basis. Makes me wonder if I’ve got another one coming.

    Posted by Brian Sisco at 3am on 02.02.06

  97. I had a spon. pneumo 5 yrs ago when I was 18. I am 5’4 115 lbs. For months after­ward I had the con­stant awful chest pain that every­one is describ­ing. Decid­ing I was not going to live with it for­ever I went to spe­cial­ist after spe­cial­ist to find out why I was still having the pain. They tested me for EVERY­THING!! Noth­ing was ever found but the doc­ters con­cluded that the car­ti­lage in my chest gets very very easily inflammed (as a result of the pneumo) caus­ing my chest pains. They put me on Bextra which at the time was used to help arthri­tus pains. Although the side affects of Bextra were hor­ri­ble and it has since been taken off the market my chest pains van­ished. It was absolutely amaz­ing! I dont know if this will help anyone but I hope so. I’ve only had 1 pneumo com­pared to most of you having so many so I con­sider myself really really lucky. But any type of med­i­cine that can help to reduce the inflam­ma­tion of your car­ti­lage in your chest cavity should greatly reduce your chest pains. Good Luck!!

    Posted by Amanda at 5pm on 03.02.06

  98. hey everybody.

    this site is a life saver, well maybe a mind saver! iv been wor­ry­ing so much since talc pleu­ra­di­sis in may 05! i dnt go a day with­out think­ing about it. Im a tal­lented footballer,play uni­bond stan­dard, 20 years old tall n slim. i am still play­ing, but i can feel the surgery some­times, well annoy­ing/ i guess its never gonna b rite. me right lung, even tho i had surgery on me left en’ some times hurts,but it always works out o rite…..i think it mite just must be me para noid. does any body else no wat i mean??? i love you all, and i know wat ya’ll going throu, peace n respect to ya’ll !!!!!!!!!! matthew, TAD­CASTER, YORK­SHIRE, ENG­LAND!!!!!!!! let me know ur out there!!! please!!!! HOW­BANGER ……….owwthathurt@hotmail.com//////////please get in touch xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    Posted by MHowgate at 1am on 09.02.06

  99. It was 18 months ago, while read­ing the news­pa­per and after a two vaca­tion at the beach that I had my first pneu­moth­o­rax. I am a female, 5’8”, 125lbs. and 51 years old. Per­haps because I am very active out­doors and am in good phys­i­cal con­di­tion, I never expe­ri­enced short­ness of breath. For me, it was a feel­ing of pres­sure through­out the chest, a con­strict­ing pain which radi­ated to the right shoul­der blade with a stab­bing pain at that site. Each deep breath accen­tu­ated that pain. The pain also radi­ated up my neck to my throat and to the inside of my right shoul­der. I could not lie down on my back or right side with­out an intense dis­com­fort rather than pain and a feel­ing of pres­sure that went all the way up to my throat. A visit to my physi­cian the next morn­ing revealed that more than 50% of my lung had col­lapsed. A chest tube was inserted at the hos­pi­tal which was extremely painful only because of inad­e­quate pain man­age­ment with nar­cotics. After two days on suc­tion to remove the air from the pleural space, I was released from the hos­pi­tal. Once the tube was pulled, I felt great and was on my way. The recur­rence rate for a spo­na­neous pneu­moth­o­rax is very high (25-50%) within the first two years. Unfor­tu­nately, I had my second one last month which was much more of an ordeal.
    After a second pneu­moth­o­rax, it is rec­om­mended to have a pleu­rode­sis to pre­vent sub­se­quent pneumothoraces.Since the recur­rence rate increases with each episode. It is gen­er­ally rec­om­mended to start with a mechan­i­cal pleu­rode­sis. This is a rough­ing up of the lung which causes a lot of irri­ta­tion and inflam­ma­tion which in turn, causes the lung to form adhe­sions to the lining of the lung. This holds the lung up if there is another episode of pneu­moth­o­rax. The recur­rence rate goes down to 1% with this pro­ce­dure. If, for some reason, this pro­ce­dure is not suc­cess­ful, pleu­rode­sis with talc (tetra­cy­cline is no longer used) and pleurec­tomy are the next step.
    To offer reas­sur­ance, I did not find the mechan­i­cal pleu­rode­sis the mis­er­able expe­ri­ence that some of you have described, most likely due to ade­quate pain man­age­ment with Fen­tenol (which I found supe­rior to mor­phine once I was switched over).
    I ended up stay­ing in the hos­pi­tal for 10 days due to the devel­op­ment of a per­sis­tant air leak. I dreaded the prospect of going back into surgey for the chem­i­cal pleu­rode­sis (talc) which is said to be much more painful than the mechan­i­cal pleu­rode­sis. My sur­geon made the deci­sion to send me home with the chest tube in place and a one way Heim­lich valve to release the air in the hope that the leak would stop. After another 8 days, the leak was con­sid­ered to be small enough so the tube could be pulled and the air still leak­ing into my chest could be reab­sorbed.
    There is an impor­tant foot­note to my story which I will direct towards all ovu­lat­ing women who have had a spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax. If your pneu­moth­o­rax occurs during your period or just before or after, it is likely that your have expe­ri­enced a cata­me­nial pneo­moth­o­rax. This is not so much a rare con­di­tion as one that is fre­quently mis­di­ag­nosed as spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax. Cata­me­nial pneu­moth­o­rax is a hor­mon­ally influ­enced col­lapse which may be but is not nec­es­sar­ily asso­ci­ated with endometrio­sis. In many cases such as mine, there are no blebs on the lung, no evi­dence of endometrio­sis or any other vis­i­ble abnor­mal­i­ties. The rec­om­mended treat­ment is the same as for spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax: pleu­rode­sis and repair of any holes. In addi­tion, it is rec­om­mended to sup­press ovu­la­tion for the first post-​surgical month to give the lung a chance to heal. Given my age and the fact that most of my peri­ods now are anovu­la­tory, I opted not to go on Lupron as it is a very potent drug with con­sid­er­able side effects.
    My rec­om­men­da­tion to anyone who has expe­ri­enced a pneu­moth­o­rax is to research your con­di­tion online. There is a lot of mate­r­ial avail­able to you there which will both edu­cate you about your con­di­tion and offer you some reas­sur­ance. Sec­ondly, do your research and find the best tho­racic sur­geon in your area so as to min­i­mize pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions. This may be an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship so get a per­sonal rec­om­men­da­tion from your other physi­cians. Lastly, get moving as soon after surgery as pos­si­ble. Force your­self to walk daily and this will speed your return to health. Good luck to all.

    Posted by Sher Sedgwick at 5pm on 18.02.06

  100. since i last wrote a com­ment in here ia mstil having chest pains,i take 7/500mg vico­dine a day. lastw ekk they re exrayed me and i ahd 5 broken ribs(ididnt fall or caugh bad so dont know how they got broke.
    please ant one s till have pain besides the myrib oain this long(11) months after mt tho­ra­comonty
    thank you
    bucky
    coplien

    Posted by bucky coplien at 1am on 20.02.06

  101. The junior nurses and doc­tors just don’t like patients like me. I am the night­mare patient. Not because I’m grouchy and rude although the anes­thetic has been known to make me swear at my poor mother post op, but becuase I ask so many ques­tions and doubt every­thing any­body does to me.

    In 1997 I was 18 and just fin­ish­ing revis­ing for my Col­lege exams (A levels) and had my first SP on my left side, after sev­eral days of trying to rest and get rid of this mys­te­ri­ous prob­lem I went to the doctor who blamed it on exam stress and sent me home. Another 2 weeks went by and I returned to the doc explain­ing noth­ing had changed - they lis­tened to the left chest and advised going for xray.

    The local hos­pi­tal saw the sp and tried simple needle aspi­ra­tion which didn’t do much. after a few more days of obser­va­tion I had my first big drain in. and what an expe­ri­ence that was - they gave me a drug that made me pretty drunk and dis­ori­en­tated and a junior doc tried to insert - he didn’t know what he was doing and after taking an hour to com­plete the pro­ce­dure they then found out they did not have the right equip­ment to attach to the drain. so I had a bodged water seal and no pump avail­able to suc­tion the lung back up. God bless the NHS

    After little suc­cess on the drain I was trans­fered to Hare­field for an oper­a­tion - mechan­i­cal Pluerode­sis and sta­pling. Woke up with self ser­vice mor­phine. I got out after around 6-7 days and thought it would all be over and done with.

    3 months later whilst at uni­ver­sity in my first few days I had another sp on the other side (r). Went to a local hos­pi­tal and was observed. Recov­ered and left the hos­pi­tal but was advised to have another oper­a­tion to pre­vent fur­ther sp’s

    Went back to Hare­field and had the same oper­a­tion on my right side. The sur­geon said it was very unlikely to trou­ble me again.
    All went well for the next 7 years apart from the occa­sional par­tial col­lapse which laid me out for a few days. then i had another sp that I couldn’t resolve with rest alone. I had another xray after 4 weeks of suf­fer­ing and was told to get to A+E urgently. this time i had pri­vate med­ical insur­ance so I hoped for better treat­ment. The junior doctor used a dif­fer­ent drain this time round (smaller gauge). it felt easier to cope with and wasn’t as trau­matic as the usual one’s. I spent 7 days on that drain with suc­tion but noth­ing was improv­ing. My new sur­geon decided to replace my drain with a larger one ! to my horror. After a total of 15 days on suc­tion they decided to oper­ate again.

    I trans­fered to St Anthony’s where I had a Pleurec­tomy + sta­pling using tho­ra­co­tomy, I had 7 weeks off work and then reluc­tantly returned. The next 2 months went ok, then I hit a bad patch again. I’ve not felt great recently but I’m get­ting used to having slight set­backs through the recov­ery process. The first time I had this happen back at col­lege, it took me a full year to return to my former self ! I’m hoping it will be much quicker this time - I’ve learnt allot over the years about how to manage the up’s and down’s.

    I’ve recently started a web­site ded­i­cated to help­ing those that have suf­fered with SP’s : http://​www.​blebinfo.​co.uk

    Posted by Ross Edwards at 11pm on 20.02.06

  102. Hi Everyone!!

    I am a 48 yr. old female. Like Rhonda Forney (Jan. 20/06 post­ing) I also have bul­lous emphy­sema. I had an sp in Early May/05. I really didn’t have any pain, I just couldn’t breath very well. The hos­pi­tal put a chest tube in and it suc­tioned for about 4 or 5 days. Early Feb/06, I started get­ting winded very easily, so went to Dr’s and they put me back in hos­pi­tal with a small sp. Doc’s called it a “Leak”. Had a CT Scan and Dr.’s found out that I have a large cyst in the top of my right lung and smaller ones around the bottom. My “Leak” healed after 3 days in hos­pi­tal. They decided not to oper­ate yet…I had to go for a lung capac­ity test (will find out results of that on March 15/06) After the test got a bit of pain in my back and have another “Leak”. My heart goes out to all of us - I hope if I have to have surgery, I sur­vive the pain you have all talked about here. Thanks so much to Jack for main­tain­ing this forum - it has been a godsend!!

    Posted by Cheryl at 9pm on 03.03.06

  103. Hi all ;-),
    Only a wap user so hope this works! :-l, i am a long time suf­ferer of post-​op chest pain after a open pleu­radec­tomy in 1990, details to follow if safe, will b so happy if i can finally talk 2 some1 who under­tands SP’s & the post-​op prob­lems, best ;-)

    Posted by G at 8pm on 07.03.06

  104. I am a 30 year old white female. About 8 years ago I started to expe­ri­ence severe pain in my right shoulder/neck/arm during men­stra­tion. My GP told me not to be stupid, that my cycle did not have any­thing to do with my arm!! and sent me away with ibupro­fen tablets…Obviously, these didn’t take away the pain. I was then referred to see an ortho­pe­dic sur­geon, I had acupunc­ture and phys­io­ther­apy, but nobody seemed to want to listen to the fact that it was hap­pen­ing at the same time as my cycle. Even­tu­ally, I saw a gyno­col­o­gist 2 years later, had a laparoscopy and was diag­nosed with having endometrio­sis implants on the out­side of my womb. The spe­cial­ist advised me that due to the fact that I was only 25 at the time and hadn’t had any kids, there was noth­ing more they could/would do for me and that he didn’t really know what was caus­ing the pain in my shoulder/neck/arm. I was placed on the pill for 12 months constantly…no breaks…but when I had a period at the end of this time, the pain was even worse than before. As you can imag­ine, I was very scared to stop taking the pill so con­tin­ued with it for the past 5 years….which isn’t very healthy! I have now seen another gyno­col­o­gist, last week, who has told me that there is a pos­si­bil­ity there may be endometrio­sis cysts on my diaphragm and pos­si­bly my liver, and will need fur­ther tests done to diag­nose this. I have read a lot lately about cate­me­nial pneu­moth­o­ra­cies during menses and just won­dered if this could be hap­pen­ing to me? I don’t actu­ally get chest pain or short­ness of breath, but the pain does worsen when I breathe, cough, hiccup, etc. I also find it very dif­fi­cult laying on my right side as the pain is unbear­able! Any com­ments will be appreciated!

    Posted by Kathryn at 12pm on 16.03.06

  105. Kathryn - I just read your post­ing and can sym­pa­thize with you. It sure is no fun being in pain. It’s always best to get a doctor’s opin­ion. If you get the tests you can start find­ing out what’s going on and maybe put your mind at ease….best of luck and keep us updated.

    I posted on March 3rd, and have gotten the results of my tests….My Lung Spe­cial­ist now claims that I didn’t have any “Leaks”. He says I have 70% Lung capac­ity. They are going to mon­i­tor me for now and unless some­thing hap­pens, or I guess if I get worse, they will do noth­ing. He did say that I have a high risk of a re-​occurance of another col­lapse. Lucky me - lol — I have to take things easy because I still get winded easily and still get the occa­sion­aly chest and back pains…..I hope every­one is doing o.k. out there….please share your ongo­ing expe­ri­ences - misery loves com­pany - lol :-)

    Posted by Cheryl at 12am on 23.03.06

  106. I’m a 20 year old whilte slim and tall male, clas­sic for a sp. It was june 05 when i had my first one in my left lung and i was 19 and work­ing in a restau­rant kitchen at the time, got taken to hos­pi­tal and had the air aspi­rated. Then spent 6 months assum­ing every­thing was all normal and even got dis­charged by my doctor at the chest clinic, he told me it was just a one off. Then new years eve sev­eral months back now, i was in the pub prepar­ing to cel­e­brate the new year and the awful pain and agony that you suffer with this prob­lem came on and I was taken to hos­pi­tal, I then started to lose con­fi­dence after that, felt awk­ward going out just incase it hap­pens again, being para­noid at every little twinge i feel in my back or chest. I man­aged to cel­e­brate my 20th just two weeks later then at the end of that week i was doing some of my uni work in the uni library and would you guess it I had to leave quickly as pos­si­ble to try and get to my car so i can drive myself to hos­pial. By the time i got to my car i walkeded into my friends house and col­lapsed on their bed, luck­ily he knew exactly what was wrong with me and rang an ambu­lance. So three times in six months makes it sp and makes me ele­gable for the op. I hate pain and nee­dles and being stuck in hos­pi­tal. I dont know the name of the op but my sur­geon said they are going to stapel my lung and lift it up or some­thing like that. Im having it at beth­nal green so i am away from home (southend essex). I am dread­ing it, the pain i will feel after­wards, the drip coming out of my chest and i will never stop being para­noid about it hap­pen­ing again even in the other lung. this sp really sucks and i will not get on a plane, i havent been out for ages, im scared to be around any form of smoke. I’m just wait­ing for the phone call to tell me i am being admit­ted to hos­pi­tal, should be any day soon. my friends and family have been bril­liant and under­stand the prob­lem. I refuse to let this lung stuff get me down, it will be hard but im only 20 and cant live in my own shadow the rest of my life its not fair. I sym­pa­this with all of you, i defi­nately have not got it as bad as many of you have, my thoughts are with you all, i know how your feeling.

    Posted by Paul at 3pm on 26.03.06

  107. Hang in there Paul. I hope after your oper­a­tion you don’t get any more pneumothorax’s. God Bless and be well!

    Posted by Cheryl at 7pm on 01.04.06

  108. Hi every­one I just got done read­ing about 60% of the posts on here.. Im 19yr old white male about 5’10 155lbs very ath­letic and fit. My SP hap­pened about a month ago to this day. I was in the hos­pi­tal for about 9 days much longer then expected because the ER had put the chest tube in the wrong spot and my lung didnt fully inflate. So far I havent had any ghost pains that others are expe­ri­enc­ing and I dont worry about it hap­pen­ing again. About 2 days after I was released I was back in the gym walk­ing :). I have an x-ray sch for this friday I cant wait for him to tell me I can lift again, I miss it. I dont know about you guys but when i was released I con­tin­ued to use those breath­ing devices I was given that helps stretch and strengthen your lung I was told. Well my only advice is think pos­i­tive and live life dont worry :) good luck everyone

    Posted by Andrew at 9pm on 03.04.06

  109. Wow that is a lot to read through. I just had a Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax last night. My first one ever. I hope this doesn’t happen again. It is very scary. I didn’t see any­thing about it in the few com­ments that I read at the top so I thought I would men­tion it. After having this happen to you, you should never scuba dive. If this hap­pens to you while you are scuba diving you would likely die.

    Posted by Jesse at 3pm on 11.04.06

  110. I’m a 20yr old male and in col­lege. My first pneu­moth­o­rax occurred 3 years ago while I was in high­school. My left lung col­lapsed and air leaked into all sorts of places. It was a very scary expe­ri­ence, when I would press on my skin around my neck,chest, and even under my arm pits little air bub­bles would pop and it made a sound like rice krispys pop­ping. I was in the hos­pi­tal for about a week and the lung healed on it’s own with no ches­tube or surgery. Well, now, 3 years later my right lung col­lapses. It has a hole in it now as I type this and I am to meet with a doctor on Monday to deter­mine if I need surgery. I hope not as it will set me way behind in my stud­ies. A pneu­moth­o­rax is such a bummer.

    Posted by Peter at 2am on 14.04.06

  111. I had my first spon­ta­neous pnue­moth­o­rax in 1991. I went
    to the ER and told them I thought I was having a heart attack. I was ini­tially relieved when they said it was a col­lapsed lung and treat­able as on the way to the hos­pi­tal i was just hoping to live until I got there. In any event, 6 months later I had another one in the oppo­site lung. And about 6 years after that-​another one.
    So it’s been sev­eral years but I was won­der­ing if anyone knows if I should be con­cerned about another recur­rance or what the odds are that this would happen again? Inter­mit­tingly I have had severe chest pain from scar tissue from the SN, or so I’ve been told that’s what it’s from. Thanks in advance.

    Posted by bethe911indy at 5am on 14.04.06

  112. I am 29, female,6 feet and 1 inch and very slim. I had my first pneu­moth­o­rax at the end of Febru­ray this year in the right lung. I had no idea what it was but the pain was ter­ri­ble yet it still took me 3 days to see a doctor who then admit­ted me into hos­pi­tal. The doc­tors decided to aspi­rate it rather than insert a tap and it expanded quite well after two weeks although i was still get­ting quite a bit of chest pain.
    Then 2 weeks to the day my left lung col­lapsed and i went to a&e where they again used aspi­ra­tion rather than a tap.The doc­tors have sug­gested it may be linked to Mar­fans Syn­drome which is genetic and some­thing linked to spon­tan­ious Pneu­moth­o­rax (and being tall and thin)has anyone else been told this?
    I am now wait­ing to see a spe­cial­ist to dis­cuss somekind of pro­ce­dure to pre­vent another one! It sounds like the pro­ce­dure i’ve seen posted on this site with the talc or what­ever it is but i dont really know much about it.
    Its been 6 weeks and my whole rib cage most days espe­cially in work i’m just wor­ried that this might be some­thing that isnt over.

    Posted by Jacquii at 6pm on 23.04.06

  113. I’m 20, female, 5’3, slim and don’t smoke. I had my first spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax in Feb ‘06 in the left lung. I was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal imme­di­ately and they put a chest tube in. 6 days later while I was still in the hos­pi­tal, my right lung col­lapsed as well. My left lung hadn’t healed up yet so those of you who know from having chest tubes you can imag­ine the pain I went through by having them on both sides. Because my right lung col­lapsed so easily after my left one did the doc­tors rec­om­mended surgery. Video assis­sted bilat­eral tho­ra­co­tomy with pleu­rode­sis. Incase any of you are look­ing for options, what they did for me was make inci­sions on my sides and sta­pled off the parts of my lungs that had the cysts and used a video camera to see inside. This is less inva­sive than having to crack my chest open to see my lung. For the pleu­rode­sis they used antibi­otic powder instead of talc. My sur­geon told me that they don’t know the long term effects (say 20 yrs later) of using talc and since i’m so young they went with the antibi­otic. It’s not as effec­tive as talc but it works. When my left lung first col­lapsed, it was a week before my 20th birth­day. I was laugh­ing when I read the begin­ing entry..the irony (about a day before your birth­day). Lucky me I spent my 20th in the hos­pi­tal with 2 col­lapsed lungs/2 chest tubes and lots of pain with the inevitable surgery loom­ing over my head. At least I got to miss midterms…and finals. haha.

    Posted by addy at 3am on 28.04.06

  114. I’m cur­rently 18. I suf­fered my first lapse of spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax on my right lung in Octo­ber 2004. It wasn’t too seri­ous, but came back about 3 times over the course of 3 months. The doc­tors rec­om­mended surgery, and I was booked in to have surgery in Feb­ru­ary 2005. Unfor­tu­nately for me, I was hit once again with SP before my oper­a­tion, and was admit­ted to hos­pi­tal. This time it was much worse, and I had the chest tube inserted, and shortly after had the surgery. Pretty much the same pro­ce­dure as Addy men­tioned above except they used talc on me.

    I get pains too every now and then. It really sucks. :(

    Posted by Peter at 1pm on 12.05.06

  115. im a 27 year old female who is only a small 5 feet tall (hardly the typical stereotype) and i have never smoked. I had my first spontaneous pneumothorax in march this year on my left side. I had to go to casualty where i was admitted to hospital to have the chest drain inserted. I ended up staying in hospital for a week and a half as every time they took my drain off the suction the lung kept going down until after 3 times it stayed up. The doctors thought that i would need an operation but i managed to get away with it, i was informed at my check up last week that if it happens again i will need an operation , so now i just hope that it wont happen again

    Posted by kerry gray at 7pm on 17.05.06

  116. May 15 2006
    I have exspe­ri­anced S.P
    I think I will exspe­ri­ance it again. I have to.

    Posted by Daniel at 4am on 18.05.06

  117. HI…my name’s sean grif­fin but my per­for­mance moniker is bOy ¥ok0. I am 23 years old. I have worked my way up in var­i­ous musi­cal projects play­ing key­boards since i was 13. Finally after 10 years of prov­ing myself, i ended up doing what i wanted…singing. I started a new band, and every­thing was on the up and up. I was get­ting lots of press. Loads of acco­lades. For the very first time in my life i felt as though i was doing what i wanted. Then, after moving from miami to Pitts­burgh PA, my left lung col­lapsed due to spon­ta­neous pneumo. I had my upper left lobe removed. I had VATS. I had Pleurec­tomy. Doc­tors told me i would need to have the same pro­ce­dure done on the right lung, as it was THREE times worse than the left lung. I got out of the hos­pi­tal (UPMC presby), gained weight, had immense depres­sion and unend­ing, inde­scrib­able pain descend on me like a vulture’s prey. I have not been able to per­form in over 7 months. They tell me i should be able to go onstage and sing and freak out, but i cannot make it down the stairs with­out wish­ing i was dead. That’s actu­ally what i do most of the time. Sit around and wish i was dead. I’m suprised i haven’t attempted sui­cide yet. My girl­friend is of the opin­ion that every­thing will be OK even­tu­ally and that i should get the 2nd surgery. This is caus­ing our rela­tion­ship to dis­tin­te­grate. I feel as though my left side is blown up by a bike pump. I feel as though i have knives being thrust into my armpits. Sev­eral doc­tors and sur­geons have told me to NOT have the surgery again no matter what. They say i should wait for the lung to pop before i take sur­gi­cal mea­sures. My per­sonal care physi­cian is urging me to have the surgery, as he thinks it has destroyed my life and i will never be able to move on with­out surgery. My sur­geon, of course, being a sur­geon, is urging me to have this 2nd surgery. His teacher was one of the doc­tors that told me not to (to be more spe­cific, he said he would not per­form the pro­ce­dure on me for ANY amount of money). He has rec­comended Zoloft and Xanax regimens…LOL…..like im sup­posed to just sit on my couch some more, screwed out of my skull on anti-​anxiety dope. Even as i type this, i am in pain. A pul­mi­nol­o­gist told me i have the begin­nings of emphy­sema as well. I am on Spiriva and albuterol. The spiriva seems to help…or at least, since ive been on it, there is NO WAY i could make it through a single day of breath­ing with­out it. If anyone has any advice or help they can pass on to me i would be over­joyed to hear peo­ples sug­ges­tions. My life has hit absolute rock bottom. I can’t enjoy any­thing. My inter­est in music is waning. I guess i’m going to bite the bullet and have the second surgery, as my life can’t get much worse. I’m ter­ri­fied, i dont know if i can go through all of it again, the chest tubes, the insen­sative sur­geons, the absolutely insane UPMC nurses. I just dont want to go through with it if it will only make the right side feel as bad as the left does. I would LOVE to hear peo­ples opin­ions on whether this is a good idea or not. Thank you.

    Posted by sean griffin at 4am on 29.05.06

  118. Is there anyone out there, who has heard of, or expe­ri­enced a sp involv­ing both lungs at the same instant (was in recov­ery from shoul­der surgery)? this hap­pened to my girl­friend recently, and the docs say its rare, but not unprecidented

    Posted by mike at 1am on 10.06.06

  119. hi, my son is a white male of 27 tall and slim build, he has just suf­fered last week his 1st sp he is still in hos­pi­tal and due to oper­a­tion on wed or thurs this week, he has had a chest drain in since last wed and a suc­tion over the week­end, it seemed the water stopped bub­bling this morn­ing and then shortly after the lung col­lapsed again, is the op done by key­hole surgery or a full blown op, i am very wor­ried because i’m not sure exactly what they are going to do.
    posted by yvonne 12 06 06 at 23.33

    Posted by yvonne chilleystone at 11pm on 12.06.06

  120. All female diag­nosed with pneu­moth­o­rax, please read my new book Living With Lung and Colon Endometrio­sis: Cata­me­nial Pneu­moth­o­rax. Short­cut: http://​www.​endometrio​sis.​org/​w​a​l​l​a​c​e​.html

    Posted by Glynis D. Wallace D.M.D at 12am on 14.06.06

  121. All females diag­nosed with pneu­moth­o­rax, please read my new book Living With Lung and Colon Endometrio­sis: Cata­me­nial Pneu­moth­o­rax. Short­cut: http://​www.​endometrio​sis.​org/​w​a​l​l​a​c​e​.html

    Posted by Glynis D. Wallace D.M.D at 12am on 14.06.06

  122. I am female, 44 years old and 5’8” - not your usual SP victim. I had my first SP in Sep­tem­ber 2005, with a second three weeks later and a debat­able third a couple of days later. Debat­able because my right lung may not have inflated prop­erly fol­low­ing aspi­ra­tion. All were treated in A&E by aspi­ra­tion, with a stay in hos­pi­tal on a drain with suc­tion for 10 days fol­low­ing the third go. I started cough­ing up blood just before xmas 2005 when a cyst on my right lung was diag­nosed via CT scan- the doc­tors think this was the cause. I then had a right pleu­rode­sis by abra­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2006 and still, in June have pain. I am off on hol­i­day in the next few weeks and am flying for the first time - I’m a tad ner­vous that things may go wrong, but hey - you can’t go on living with the “what if” syn­drome. The first time it hap­pened I had been mowing the lawn and having great dif­fi­culty start­ing the damn thing, the second time I had been throw­ing the fris­bee for the dog, both the same sort of right arm action. I still believe this had some­thing to do with the cal­lopses. The oper­a­tion did not involve open­ing up my ribcage like a car­cass but making a 9” inci­sion around my right shoul­der blade. The scare is not the great­est but the care I received in my local hos­pi­tal in Bas­ingstoke and where I had the oper­a­tion in Southamp­ton Gen­eral was excep­tion­ally good - OK the food was foul but they don’t pre­tend to be a gourmet restau­rant. The one thing they don’t tell you is the amount of pain and the length of time it lasts but I sup­pose that’s what mor­phine and drugs are for. So far it’s been suc­cess­ful and every­thing seems to be OK although I don’t think I have full lung capac­ity. I think the chest drain scar is the more painful but having had four removed I truly believe the best way is to take a big breath in, then breath all the way out to make your lungs as small as pos­si­ble and they just pull it out, I hardly noticed when it was done this way. Yes, the whole thing is very scarey, espe­cially the first time it hap­pens but I am amased at how much more common the con­di­tion is than I thought.

    Posted by Sabrina at 5pm on 15.06.06

  123. HI YVONNE SORRY TO HEAR YOUR SON HAS SUF­FERED PHNEU­MOTH­O­RAX FOR THE FIRST TIME NOT A NICE THING TO GO THROUGH. I HAVE BEEN THROUGH IT MANY TIMES AND HAVE HAD SUR­GARY TO BOTH LUNGS (PLEUREC­TOMY AND RESEC­TION TO THE TOP APICAL}. IF THATS THE SUR­GARY YOUR SONS HAVIN THEN IT IS THROUGH KEY­HOLE UNLESS THEY EXPE­RI­ANCE PROB­LEMS THEN THEY MIGHT HAVE TO CUT HIM OPEN [THO­RA­CO­TOMY]. WHAT EVER HE IS HAVIN ITS NOT VERY NICE.HE WILLL HAVE AN EPIDURAL AS WELL AS A GEN­ER­ALL. WHEN HE WAKES UP HE WILL HAVE 2 CHEST DRAINS IN 1 WILL COME OUT AFTER A FEW DAYS THE OTHER WILL COME OUT A FEW DAYS AFTER THAT. HE WILL GET LOTS OF PAIN RELIEF [MORHINE] WOW!!! THATS THE NICE PART. ITS BEEN 7 MONTHS SINCE MY FIRST LOT OF SUR­GARY AND 3 MONTHS SINCE THE LAST LOT AND I STILL GET PIERC­ING PAINS NOW. MY EXPE­RI­ANCE WAS NOT A GOOD 1 PER­SON­ALLY ID RATHER GIVE BIRTH AGAIN TO TWINS OR EVEN QUADS THAN GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN.

    Posted by sarah at 9pm on 22.06.06

  124. hi every­one i like most of the other people suffer from phneu­moth­o­rax in both lungs i have had more than ten attacks of upto date and its been going on for about 15 years i am now booked in to see a sur­geon on the 11th of july, after read­ing most of the com­ments on this page i am start­ing to wonder if surgery is really the answer as most people still seem to be in as much pain after­wards and at least at the minute i have an attack and after a few weeks when it has died down i am ok for a year or so. i would just like to add to anyone who reads tis page and has never suf­fered from this ill­ness you really can not explain the pain it causes it feels like you have been stabbed and every­time you move the knife is being twisted. i hope for every­one who suf­fers from this that the host­pi­tals spend more money on a cure for this hor­ri­ble ill­ness that seems to be bigger than anyone thinks it is.

    Posted by jim mason at 10pm on 30.06.06

  125. My son has just suf­fered a pneu­moth­o­rax after regain­ing strength after knee surgery. He rides motox and has had chest injuries in the past. He has a drain as aspi­ra­tion didn’t work. They removed 2 litres + of air and sent him home. He was back in by the morn­ing. Has anyone else expe­ri­enced this after exer­cise. We do not think this is caused by the normal pos­si­bly hered­itery bleps. How long is the longest anyone has had a drain to heal. WE don’t want to go into surgery to soon.

    Posted by sallie at 11pm on 01.07.06

  126. Hi im Ali and iv just started suf­fer­ing from spon­tanous pnue­moth­o­rax does any one no if they could be coursed by run­ning as i run a lot thank you

    Posted by Ali at 3pm on 05.07.06

  127. I picked up this site in a search because it said a dog had suf­fered from sp. I could not find that com­ment but I was inter­ested because my cat has today had her third sp. She had the first in April 2005, the second in May 2005. Both times Xrays revealed the diag­no­sis, her chest was drained and she then had a course of pred­nisolone. In all occa­sions includ­ing today there is no ques­tion of injury or other trauma. It seems to be related to pollen or as today dust from hay making.
    I men­tioned this socially to two super spe­cial­ist and very expen­sive vets who said I must be wrong, there must have been injury but I knew there had been noth­ing and it took my really sound gen­eral small animal vet to pick up on the cause. The cat is female, 5 years old and (typ­i­cally I think) very small and slen­der. She is per­haps the size of a ten month old kitten. Most of the com­ments I have read seem to be from slen­der, fit people.
    Typ­i­cally she is in great pain, rapid res­pi­ra­tory dis­tress, drool­ing fol­lowed by cyanosed tissue in mouth, (blue lips and tongue) and then scream­ing with pain.

    I hope this may help anyone with the con­di­tion or anyone else with a dog or cat or other small animal and I would be inter­ested to know other expe­ri­ences.
    Angela.

    Posted by Angela Thorpe at 11am on 19.07.06

  128. I have had more than 10 spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax in two years….I have had to have 7 oper­a­tions includ­ing a big one that involved taking the lining between my ribs and lungs out so that my lung couldn’t col­lapse any longer. The sur­geon said if I didn’t that my lung would just keep collapsing…..That oper­a­tion set me back 6 long weeks…..The only thing I wish is that I wouldn’t hurt every day for the rest of my life…..I am glad that I am alive….I just wish it didn’t hurt when it got too cold or too hot or if I am stressed or just cause it is hurting…..

    Posted by natalie at 10pm on 21.07.06

  129. ALI- Spon­ta­neous Pneu­moth­o­rax occurs because you are born with lesions (little bub­bles) on your lungs and even­tu­ally they will pop and put little pin like holes in your lungs. Your run­ning has noth­ing to do with spon­ta­neous pneumothorax…..It is a dis­or­der that you are born with…No worries….Everything will be all right.

    Posted by Natalie at 10pm on 21.07.06

  130. My twin sister has Pneu­moth­o­rax on both of her lungs, which was diag­nosed in hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day. I’m strug­gling to cope at the moment and I’m not quite sure what to do. She also has endometrio­sis, which I now believe, cre­ated the Pneu­moth­o­rax in the first place.

    Posted by Abiola at 7am on 23.07.06

  131. Just a quick note: no more posts about cats, dogs or other pets with col­lapsed lungs will be allowed on this post.

    Posted by Jack Mottram at 12am on 09.01.07

  132. Woke up in the middle of the night, with bad pains in my chest, could hardly lie down it was so painful, think­ing I was having a heart attack, but didnt feel light headed jumped up, walked down­stairs stood there moving my arms check­ing if I got dizzy but didnt. Slight jump­ing, very slight made the pain feel as if it were my stom­ach. Still in bad pain, slept lieing on the other side. Next day went doc­tors to get some inhalers, hes like go to A and E today, now. Shocked, think­ing it wasnt worth it, trek down to A and E. Wait­ing etc, see the nurse shes like not both­ered taking my details etc. Blah blah, get a chest X ray done, come back and say ‘You have a col­lapsed lung mate.’ Im like, uhhhh okay, did not expect that. By now the nurses are both­ered and not treat­ing me with igno­rance, every­ones con­cerned. Youve got to have a tube stuck in your chest and the trapped air sucked out. Im like what? Now? Aww what.. I dont want to. But couldnt wait if its nec­es­sary Ill have it I thought even­tu­ally. So the entire crew of scrubs uk tipped up, all asking if its cool for the other doc­tors to watch, I was okay with this and felt like a sci­ence exper­i­ment, anyway time for the pro­ce­dure. Iodine on cotton wool, stinks, on my chest, oh yeah wasnt expect­ing being worked on that day so wasnt excactly sweet smelling lol, then the nee­dles and tubes and stuff come out and I started to feel sii­i­i­i­ick. Sweat­ing, I grad­u­ally man­aged to sort my head out and let them carry on, little injec­tion, you go numb. Ive been to the den­tist 100s of times so this was noth­ing. Then the tube. Maaan, feels uncomfy, doesnt hurt, two minu­ites of going are you nearly fin­ished yet and I was done. In all hon­esty it didnt seem to make all that much dif­fer­ence, I guess the pnemoth­o­rax was mild. Sat up in bed bored, want­ing to go home but another X ray later, they say it made a bit of dif­fer­ence, do I feel okay, im like feel the same, theyre like, stay overnight but totally didnt want to. Had biked it there 125cc kawazaki out­side so that would have got nicked. I was off and decided I wasnt stay­ing, nurse like if you feel bad again come back straight away. Days and days pass, still ‘feel’ it a bit, but grad­u­ally gets better, very grad­u­ally. X rays say it was improv­ing. Months pass, Till today, just walked 3 miles back from an inter­view. Sit down, then take a breath and feel the same awk­ward pain I felt last time, not as bad but the same. Aww no and gutted is what im think­ing, couldnt draw a full breath, started pan­ick­ing look­ing for inhalers. Shouldnt have walked so far. Sick of this, tubes suck­ing suck, dont want that again, I sat here think­ing of how to sort it out myself, how would you do it on a desert island? Tried var­i­ous stretches noth­ing seems to do it though. Then tried push­ing my stom­ach so it makes your breath go in and out that seemed to relive it some­how. Then tried this whilst suck­ing but not allow­ing air to enter my mouth, like suck­ing on a straw with the end blocked. This REALLY seemed to make a load of dif­fer­ence and the pain seemed to get slightly less, like the low lung air pres­sure made the air in the cavity go back through the hole. I dont know, but it seems like I just had another spon­tan­ious pnemoth­o­rax, and some how man­aged to suck it into expand­ing again now I can take a full breath the resis­tance seems less. I know that this is mild com­pared to some other suf­fer­ers and words cant convey how much this con­di­tion sucks. Hope­fully will do this excer­cise till I feel better. Oh yeah, I smoke, Ive smoked for ages, basi­cally hit it and cough was the rou­tine. I did this to myself, that it hap­pens to non smok­ers is very bad indeed, but I kind of asked for it. I have to quit or my lungs gonna thats the score. Cant wait till you can get replace­ment lungs but I guess untill then its me and the uni­verse. Hope you all manage to recover. Sin­cerely - Luke from Man­ches­ter UK

    Posted by Lopez at 5pm on 15.01.07

  133. Hey every­body I had my first SP while I was get­ting a hair­cut back in August 2006. Did not know what it was maybe just cramps but the pain was hor­ri­ble and I couldn’t breathe too well but I went to the doc the next day and found out what it was. It was minor so we let it heal on its own. About a month later I had a 2nd one after my trip to Vegas and it was deter­mined then I should just do the surgery to try and “fix” it instead of it hap­pen­ing again and again. I had a VATS pro­ce­dure with a pleural abla­tion so they cut off the top of my right lung where these blebs should be and then they scrub it down and paste it to the chest cavity so more blebs should not form. I was told that having the surgery will give you like a 90 - 100% chance of it not hap­pen­ing again. Also they said if it usu­ally occurs in one lung then maybe a 10-15% chance of it hap­pen­ing in the other which is still scary. I still get chest pains here and there and even on my left side like right now but I can still breathe and its not ter­ri­ble so no wor­ries. Have to see my pul­mo­nolo­gist in a month so I can ask him more ques­tions to see if it is all normal. Keep you all updated and stay strong. Didn’t know there were a lot of other people out there like me so thats com­fort­ing. Be well

    p.s. - oh yeah by the way not a smoker and never have in my life and over­all pretty healthy person eat well and exer­cise but I am a bit tall and skinny and did do some high impact work­outs like tae kwon do so it could have aided in the SP hap­pen­ing but seems it can happen no matter what.

    Posted by Bobby at 7pm on 19.01.07

  134. Hello everyone,

    I had a spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax in 2002. A chest tube was inserted to drain the fluid. After a few days they decided to oper­ate. The oper­a­tion involved the removal of lung tissue and a number of tita­nium sta­ples (3-5). Was this pro­ce­dure wise? Is it pos­si­ble that these sta­ples could fall out or cause any com­pli­ca­tions in the future?

    Thank you for your input,

    Zach (23, United States)

    Posted by Zachary Newquist at 6pm on 28.02.07

  135. Hi all,

    I had my first SP oper­a­tion in 2002 on my right lung and another in 2004 on my left. I was kind of relieved to hear from my doctor that there was a 5 per­cent prob­a­bil­ity of recur­rence and it was very uncom­mon after two years of the oper­a­tion. Since both the oper­a­tions, I gained con­sid­er­able kgs by eating fat prod­ucts ESPE­CIALLY meat as rec­om­mended by a tra­di­tional physi­cian here in Mon­go­lia. When I say fat food, I do not just mean cheese with bread on it, I mean solid meat with a lot of fat on top because it helps your lungs’ outer layer to form in a robust and solid manner. Also, hope every­one of you is emo­tion­ally strong.

    GD

    Posted by gd at 2am on 21.03.07

  136. I am a 32 yr old femail and I have expe­ri­enced 3 spon­ta­neous pneu­morax, 2 on one side and 1 on the other before receiv­ing surgery. I had a bi-​lateral pleu­rode­sis in 1998, it wasn’t pleas­ant but seeing as I’d been afflicted on both sides they felt it was nec­es­sary. About 6 weeks after the gru­elling surgery I had another col­lapse on one side, it wasn’t severe enough to war­rant a chest drain and I just had to stay in hos­pi­tal for around 5 days while we waited for the lung to come back up. Since then I have had no fur­ther recur­rences over the last 8 years. I do still suffer with chest pains though so it’s a relief to hear that others do too. I don’t get sudden chest pains but gen­er­ally wake up with an aching feel­ing across my chest most mornings….does anyone else get this? To any of you await­ing surgery, it’s not exactly fun but it is worth it!

    Posted by Nicola Sawer at 4am on 28.03.07

  137. Three weeks ago I woke up with a SP. the pain went right across my chest and knocked me for 6 when I breathed in. I thought it might be a pinched nerve or sim­i­lar so decided to go to work anyway(Telstra field tech­ni­cian) for two days. On the second day I noticed my breath­ing was becom­ing shorter by the hour and pre­sented to my GP here on the Cen­tral Coast where he then sent me for an xray which showed a spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax of over 75% and was told to go straight to emer­gency.
    The doctor tried the small tube first and removed the air by suck­ing it out man­u­ally with a syringe in an attempt to inflate the lung, didn’t work so unfor­tu­nately the big one was inserted omg the pain was just ter­ri­ble. Every­thing was going well and was released after 4 days.
    Due to the nature of my second employ­ment as a pro­fes­sional fire­fighter there was a need for me to have this fixed with pleu­rode­sis (TALC) surgery. Two weeks later I was oper­ated on and I am now three days out of the Royal Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal in Sydney. I cannot sleep this is really painfull I have run out of pain killer and as it is Easter good luck find­ing a GP that will pre­scribe me some­thing!
    I have one ques­tion to ask all the other patients out there, after the removal of the drain and being released from hos­pi­tal does anyone get the sen­sa­tion of a gur­gling or pop­ping feel­ing around the drain site?? as I breathe in the pain is a stab­bing and pop­ping feel­ing par­tic­u­larly when I lay down either on my back or the oppo­site side of my op.
    Any com­ments on this asso­ci­ated pain would be appreciated.

    C.Hodge Sydney Australia.

    Posted by Chris Hodge at 11am on 06.04.07

  138. I few weeks back I had the wierdest sen­sa­tion of not being able to breathe in deeply like not get­ting over the hump so to say. This wor­ried me but I kept on as normal. This has gotten better but on exhal­ing I get this pop­ping feel­ing in my right chest. Has anyone had a simlar expe­ri­ence. I never really had any pain so I maybe not expe­ri­enc­ing a sp. Just thought I would get some feed­back from exper­inced people so to say. Thanks.

    Posted by Clay at 6pm on 27.04.07

  139. I am a 24 year old white male, 5’/11” and 115 lbs. This has been plaug­ing me my whole life. When i was 15 i expe­ri­enced my first and most seri­ous pnue­moth­o­rax. My lung col­lapsed 70% of the way, but i did not recieve a chest drain out of fear. It has col­lapsed count­less times since then. I would say that my lung col­lapses a little bit every day. some days its the left. some days it’s the right. same places often, but new places as well. i can feel the air escap­ing from the “blebs” i sup­pose (never really talk to doc­tors about my con­di­tion since the ini­tial collapse)…even if i put my hand to the spot i can feel the air with my fin­gers. at that point i have the common stab­bing feel­ing in the area along with short­ness of breath and all the other common symp­toms. i then also get the feel­ing of pop­ping rice krispies under my skin around my back, chest and espe­cially neck. it is very scary. i am a heavy smoker, and obvi­ously a very stupid person. it seems that usu­ally one nights rest puts me back to “normal” but through the day i feel it happen all over. it seems i feel sim­i­lar symp­toms to every­one here but it also seems i have some dif­fer­ent ones…i am will­ing to speak more about this..if anyone inter­ested address derek in their mes­sage please.

    Posted by derek at 9am on 01.05.07

  140. hi…my name is alex…i am a 15 year old male..150 pounds and very athletic…i do not smoke and i am one of the health­i­est people around…on Decem­ber 28th at a bas­ket­ball prac­tice for my high school i started to feel chest pains and back pains on my right side…i did not think much of it until my breath­ing started to shorten and i couldn’t breathe as well….after the prac­tice i went to the emer­gency room and after 3 or 4 hours in the ER i was attended to and told that i had a SP pneumothorax…i had 40% of my lung collapsed..that night they put a chest tube in me and the next morn­ing i was able to go home…a week later i started to feel bad again and went in for some x-rays…once again about 35% of my lung was col­lapsed and i was put in the hos­pi­tal for an extended length…i then was hooked up to a vacume that sucked out and tried to inflate my lung….it did not work and was even­tu­ally to the point where i received surgery…it went very well…they sta­pled and cut off 5% of my lung and sand­pa­pered my chest wall…it was very painful but now i am doing very good and am hoping not to ever have any­more problems…it has been a expe­ri­ence that i will never forget….
    alex

    Posted by alex at 3pm on 18.05.07

  141. I had an SP about 5-6 weeks ago. 2 weeks after it hap­pened again (or felt like it0. doc sent me off for xrays - lung all clear no shad­ows or infec­tions. hap­pened again today. now they are saying i am hyper mobile and i keep pinch­ing a nerve behind my shoul­der blade making my chest hurt and feels like lung has col­lapsed again. i dont under­stand how pain in my chest exactly where it was when it col­lapsed has any­thing to do with a pinched nerve. the first SP was con­firmed by CT Scan using injectable dye. Am going for second opin­ion today

    Posted by Jodes at 3am on 21.05.07

  142. I had a case of S P of about 20% in April 2004, i was only 17 then. Fol­low­ing an aspi­ra­tion, 2 days later I had a com­plete right sided col­lapse. About 2 weeks later with a chest drain, I started get­ting a tem­per­a­ture. To cut a long story short, my dress­ing was not changed for 2 weeks, and i ended up with MRSA, fol­lowed by sep­ticemia and mul­ti­ple organ fail­ure. I spent 4 weeks in inten­sive care, during which i suf­fered a ‘suspected heart attack’, so they say, a heart oper­a­tion and a lung biopsy to get rid of infected stuff. Amaz­ingly the lung reex­panded itself. By this time i had been bed­bound for 4 weeks and could barely move a muscle. How­ever i had another heart oper­a­tion to remove fluid in my chest bea­cuse i was given a 10 times over­dose of blood thin­ning med­i­cine, tin­za­parin. I was finally dis­charged in June 2004, 3 months after my S P, having had 3 near death expe­ri­ences. In augaust 2004 i was again diag­nosed with a 60% right sided col­lapse. I had a peu­rode­sis/ VATS pro­ce­dure which failed and had to be redone a week later. Now i have con­stant chest pain but my GP can do noth­ing about it. Due to having 3 oper­a­tions on my rght lung i have severe nerve damage under my right arm and on the right side of my chest. As an active young sports­man, i feel utterly use­less even after 3 long and hard years of phys­io­ther­apy and exer­cise trying to regain some of the strength and sharp­ness I had before. I don’t have any sta­mina due to the heart prob­lems, and there­fore can’t play any sports for more than 5 min­utes at a time. An avid cricket player I have now lost the use of my bowl­ing arm, can’t bat for more than 5-10mins, and can’t run in the field due to poor heart con­di­tion and weak legs.

    Posted by Akib at 2pm on 10.06.07

  143. I am a white female in her early 30’s who has suf­fered from SP for the last 10 years. My first attack was very scary and painful, although only 35%. It was diag­nosed by an x-ray and was left to sort itself out.

    A second attack a couple of years later wasn’t picked up by my doctor - I had pulled a muscle appar­ently - but anyone who has had SP once knows if they get it again!

    My third attack hap­pened about 6-8 weeks ago. This started off at about 25% but then has reoc­cured about every 10 days increas­ing in sever­ity up to 35%. My doctor ini­tial failed to diag­nose it - another pulled muscle - until I per­suaded her to send me for a chest X-ray. I have not had any drains or treat­ment and it always seems to recover on it’s own after 10 days or so but I have been left with an uncom­fort­able feel­ing on my right side. I’m due to have VATS in a couple of weeks to pre­vent it hap­pen­ing again.

    Inter­est­ingly, my con­sul­tant has told me that SP in young women can be asso­ci­ated with endometrio­sis and also can be linked with your peri­ods (some­thing to do with small holes in the diaphragm). I have not been able to find very much about this so far on the web.

    The more I inves­ti­gate this it does appear to be a ‘not uncommon’ prob­lem which is reg­u­lary mis­di­ag­nosed by GP’s and doc­tors and with vary­ing degrees of treat­ment. A lot of reports I read talk of hos­pi­tal admit­tance, drains etc as an imme­di­ate treat­ment, whereas I have never been admit­ted with this.

    I have seen 3 con­sul­tants in the last 6 weeks about this and all have said that after 2 episodes of SP surgery is advised as the chances of re-​occurance inclrease with each attack but from what I have read this doesn’t seem to be actively followed.

    I would be inter­ested to hear of any UK sup­port groups or any fur­ther views on diag­no­sis and advise that has been given to people….

    Posted by Ruth at 10am on 13.06.07

  144. hello people, i am only 15 years of age and came out of hos­pi­tal today ( after being in for two weeks ) this is now my sev­enth spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax, both lungs will col­lapse on a reg­u­lar basis now. it took two weeks for a 2.8cm col­lapse to heal, yet i still get a ” cracking” sen­sa­tion in my chest, i am meant to be having surgery soon which should fix it, but hey lets see. the doc­tors have told me that , heavy exer­cise, no exer­cise and smok­ing will affect wether a pneu­moth­o­rax will take place. i have stopped all of the above and yet i still have prob­lems, anyone got any ideas?

    Posted by Matthew at 10am on 17.07.07

  145. Well after read­ing all these horror sto­ries thought i would just add my own now seen as its look­ing like im going to be a long term suf­ferer of the dreaded spon­tan­iouse pnemoth­o­rax. hope some­one can also answear some ques­tions for me.
    I am a tall slim 25 year old 6ft female i am an active life­guard. my first episode was 3 years ago when i was going to the docs with chest com­plaints to keep get­ting told i had a pulled muscle. After not being able to take any­more pop­ping and pain in my chest, i went into acci­dent and emmer­gancy where they diag­nosed me with spon­tan­iouse pnemoth­o­rax. I had aspi­ra­tion and had to rest till i recoverd. I thought it was all over when i was preg­nant with my second girl and the symp­toms came back. this time it was so bad i almost had a heart attack and had to get a chest drain. I ended up in and out of hos­pi­tal for the remain­der of my preg­nancy with a total of three chest drains and 5 col­lapses, also a little grow­ing baby won­der­ing whats going on! I had to go to a spe­cial hos­pi­tal to give birth where lung and baby spea­cial­ist were all on stand by(thanks to all the docs and nurses who helped me). My baby girl was born healthy thank­ing god for that too!
    Its been two years since that hap­pend ive always had nigling pains but thought it was all behid me when it has hap­pend again while i was at work. i have been exer­sis­ing when its hap­pend and sit­ting doing nothig when it has hap­pend.
    Im now going to get the oper­a­tion which i cant sleep for think­ing about and need to know from people who have had it done. Is it sorer than the chest drain? can you breath okay when you wake up? how long were you in hos­pi­tal? and how effec­tive do you think it has been? Thanks

    Posted by carrie lawson at 4pm on 07.10.07

  146. I just won­dered what the typ­i­cal recov­ery time is for some­one after pleu­rode­sis. What are the stages of recov­ery in terms of pain, etc. over the first week or two, and I heard that you are not allowed to lie down at first? Thanks.

    Posted by Rosemary at 3pm on 24.10.07

  147. Hey Rose­mary,
    carrie again. im going in for the pleu­ro­di­sis oper­a­tion tomor­row. The doc told me id be in roughly a week. ill let you know how it goes when im out, wish me luck!!

    Posted by carrie lawson at 10pm on 10.11.07

  148. Carrie,
    I hope you have had a suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion by now. The oper­a­tion I had lasted for 3 hours and I had that itchy feel­ings and pain until after my drains were removed after a week. I still felt the slight pain after a year and could not work out but after almost two years of my oper­a­tion, I can go back to work out but you will have that tiny pain inside your chest when­ever you are tired. So, I would sug­gest that you pay no atten­tion to slight pains when you breath for a year and start exer­cis­ing a bit until your second year. Also, try beef and fat because it will make your lung thicker and stronger and at the same time exer­cise a bit so that you dont gain too much weight. Also, DONT get sweat too much when it is windy out­side and most impor­tantly DONT EVER get sun­burn because it will badly affect your lung. Even­tu­ally, I hope that you will forget the bad memories.

    GD (Mongolia)

    Posted by GD at 7am on 16.11.07

  149. HELLO! Carrie again, thanks for the recov­ery tips. Its been two months since my oper­a­tion. It turns out i had a bulley at the top of my lung which they removed and sta­pled my lung together. i then got the pleu­rode­sis (stick­ing the lung to the chest wall). I was of course in shock, it wasnt nice. I spent one week in hos­pi­tal, hooked up to mor­phine for 2-3 days. I was weak for 3-4 weeks my kids had to stay at their grans as i couldnt look after them. two months on now i do still have after pains but my lung does feel stronger and it doesnt feel like its going to col­lapse. Also i do know that when i get too hot my side throbs, i think its the scars. Im still off work but have started to swim a little bit at a time.I have started having pains in my left lung wich when i went back to the sur­geon, he has informed me that i was born with a bulley on my lung and he is more than sure as in most cases the other lung is the same and will col­lapse even­tu­ally. I have been advised to have the same bul­lec­tomy and pleu­rode­sis oper­a­tion on my left lung. I want to wait until my right lung has recoverd more first and hope the left can hang on for a while. Make sure you have plenty of sup­port and help. i couldnt have done this alone.

    Posted by carrie lawson at 1pm on 21.01.08

  150. hi to you fellow suf­fer­ers i was a young 5foot 11 inches 22 years old spn to my right lung at this time i was a pro singer and it hap­pened whilst on stage i was chest drained for one week and left hos­pi­tal but within a week it hap­pened again .i under­went surgery and had another long 3 weeks in hos­pi­tal never think­ing that this would happen again.16 years later the same hap­pened to the left lung after 4 spns to this side i under­went surgery this time it was through key hole three days later whilst still in hos­pi­tal a fur­ther col­lapsed lung i then had major surgeryto fix the prob­lem but guess what another week passed by and another spn fur­ther surgery .its now been 6 years and i am still in real pain never get a good­nights sleep con­stant pain killers con­stant chest cramps is there realy a cure for this pain ian lawton if you can help please feel free to advise me

    Posted by ian lawton at 1pm on 22.01.08

  151. from the above dated 21 jan 08 e mail ian-lawton65@hotmail.co.uk

    Posted by ian lawton at 1pm on 22.01.08

  152. I am a Search And Rescue Tech­ni­cian in the Cana­dian Air­force and I expe­ri­enced a spon­te­nous pneu­moth­o­rax. Now the Air­force will not let me dive due to the risk of diving may induce another one. I am 165 cm tall and stocky non smoker. My CT scan showed no inper­fec­tions and I did excel­lant on the pul­monary func­tion test. In order to due my job we are required to dive. Now my career is at risk. Does any body have any advice? Has any­body heard of a pneu­moth­o­rax occur­ing while diving? The fol­low­ing is the inci­dent report writ­ten for the Air­force. On 08 Aug 07 while on route to Jarvis lake to attend QL6A moun­tain phase I was injured load­ing kit onto a CFSSAR truck in the city of Kam­loops. While plac­ing my bag into the vehi­cle I felt what seem to be a pulled maus­cle in my chest. I quickly was over­come by an intense amount of pain in my chest with short­ness of breath which slowly sub­sided with rest. For the remain­der of the trip I was uncom­fort­able and decided that if this pain con­tin­ues I will go to the Hos­pi­tal to get checked out. By the morn­ing of 9 Aug 07 the pain and short­ness of breath has increased to a untol­er­a­ble level that imme­di­ate med­ical atten­tion was needed. I was trans­ported to the hos­pi­tal in HInton Alberta by MCpl Gul­li­ford and Sgt Macken­zie who also wit­nessed the injury in Kam­loops. I was quickly admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal and diag­nosed as a spon­te­nous Pneu­moth­o­rax. My chest was decom­pressed in the hospital.

    Posted by Dean at 3am on 26.01.08

  153. Can I ask though - how did you get this picked up and into google news?

    Very impres­sive that this blog is syn­di­cated through Google and is it some­thing that is just up to Google or you actively created?

    Obvi­ously this is a pop­u­lar blog with great data so well done on your seo success..

    Rollerblad­ing greats you should write about next, my ex was a Wind­surf­ing champ!

    Posted by Weapons: Nunchakus at 2pm on 13.08.08

  154. I had a spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­rax while dri­ving to wal­mart, I didn’t cough or sneeze or even breath heavy. By the time I got to the hos­pi­tal my lung was 90% col­lapsed. They ime­di­ately put a chest tube in and told me I should be out in three days. Here I am 5 weeks, 4 tubes, and 3 surg­eries later still in the hos­pi­tal. They cut a peice of lung off, sta­pled it, removed scar tissue from the lung and chest wall, finally got the lung to stick to the chest wall, and I still show little sign of improve­ment. All of this is just a few days after my 18th birth­day. I am ath­letic and they said I should heal pretty fast. So why am I still here? How long does this nor­mally take?

    Posted by Justin at 1am on 12.04.09

  155. So sorry to hear of all the expe­ri­ences. I got diag­nosed a month after I started having back pain, cough and severe short­ness of breath. Seems like having the surgery means long term pain, that sounds hard. I don’t want to do the surgery and I hope my doctor will not press me to do so, although he is saying I should as it’s not the first time I’ve had this. Right now although my pneu­moth­o­rax is large, I show no symp­toms except short­ness of breath on exer­tion, so it’s a wait and see approach. I can take that, although I must say when it’s severe, it can be very fright­en­ing, feel­ing like you’re suf­fo­cat­ing and may die from lack of oxygen. But I haven’t died yet from it, so I’m think­ing it won’t kill, I should chill.

    Posted by Cat at 6am on 09.05.09

  156. I have had over 48 col­lapses in 4 years on both lungs, and am a slim 29 year old female. I have been through a string of doc­tors, good and bad, and finally my last emer­gency room visit got me into a sur­geon who did the talc pluerode­sis. I had a hell of a time in the hos­pi­tal and just got out. I am scared from read­ing these com­ments that it may have all been in vain anyway. And my lung may have adhered abnor­mally, because slouch­ing is the only com­fort­able posi­tion that doesn’t take my breath away and cause dis­com­fort. Forget burp­ing, hic­cups, sneezes and vomiting… I can’t tell which is worse (before or the after). I am sorta glad I am not alone, but I actu­ally wish I was the only one, so none of you had to deal with this. I often think about dying, and appre­ci­ate every day I exist. I just wish it would stop, and wonder, why me at all. Email if you want: n.koerth@gmail.com- It would be nice to talk to some­one per­son­ally who expe­ri­ences this. Maybe a suc­cess story or two to help?? I have yet to find any and it’s pretty dis­cour­ag­ing.
    Thanks.

    Posted by Nickie K. at 1am on 30.05.09

  157. I recently had two episodes (one in each lung a month apart) I really want to go to this party a week or so form now and I am wor­ried I might have another one. I am a tall slen­der black male and I’m just a teen. I have never needed a tube but I might in the future. this ruined my entire summer for the most part. The doc­tors said I might have a MORFAN, a genetic dis­ease passed through my family.

    Posted by Corey at 11pm on 31.07.09

  158. wow never heard of those pro­ce­dures, but i have had three spon­ta­neous pneu­mos and then they did a “left thoro­scopic bleb resection” because it was the left lung, it wasn’t too expen­sive, and i was only in the hos­pi­tal for about three and a half days, and they say theres only a 3-5% chance of the left lung ever col­laps­ing again, but odds are theres a 20% the other one will for some reason hmm… but if you just let it heal there is a sig­nif­i­cant increase in prob­a­bil­ity that it will just happen again. theres mild sore­ness and even a tin­gling sen­sa­tion along your stom­ach and ribs from hyper­sen­si­tive nerves lol, its kind of cool to think about but its defi­nately a per­ma­nent fix, i hope, we’ll just have to wait and see when i push myself physically.

    Posted by Devon at 7pm on 01.09.09

  159. I expe­ri­enced a right phneu­moth­o­rax back in 2005. Spent 18 days in the hos­pi­tal total. Went thru the pleu­rode­sis pro­ce­dure on the 9th day. Released with 2 small “blow holes” that served to allow trapped air to escape from inside the chest, out­side the lung. Even­tu­ally grad­u­ated from open holes to allow­ing them to close and heal. Still in 2009, I have no feel­ing on my right side from my elbow up into the shoul­der, back to the middle of my spine, down to almost my waist, and front to the middle of my ster­num and also almost to my waist. The right side aches after exer­cis­ing, and when it’s cold/damp out. Stretch­ing the right side is lim­ited due to the lung not allow­ing the mus­cles between the ribs to move nor­mally. Cough­ing is more dif­fi­cult and I expe­ri­ence reg­u­lar “sighing” in an uncon­scious effort to exhale more air because the lung does not deflate any­more. I was told this is as good as it gets. FYI, I’m not tall, slim, or a young male so the doc­tors were as sur­prised as I was when they real­ized my con­di­tion. Clas­si­fied as reason unkown.

    Posted by Hailey at 7pm on 24.09.09

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