Under The Knife

There are unlikely to be any posts for the next ten days. Very unlikely indeed, unless the NHS have installed WiFi net­works in their hos­pi­tals since my last sojourn on the wards. I will, how­ever, be keep­ing a diary while recov­er­ing from the surgery, and some of those fevered pen & ink scrib­bles will func­tion as notes for a long post here to be typed up slowly but surely on my return.

See you soon…

[later…]

Tomor­row morn­ing at 09.30 GMT I’m going into hos­pi­tal. Some­time on Thurs­day, a sur­geon will cut a hole in my side and insert a tiny camera, and some tiny sur­gi­cal instru­ments. Then two things will happen, as I under­stand it.

1. Firstly, the sur­geon will tour my chest cavity look­ing for Apical Blebs, the tiny bub­bles of flesh that form on the sur­face of my lungs and stick to the inte­rior of my pleura, then burst, caus­ing the spon­ta­neous pneu­moth­o­raxes that have incon­ve­nienced me over the last four years. If the sur­geon finds any blebs, they will be burst and sewn up.
2. Then comes the pleu­rode­sis. This involves spray­ing the upper third of my lungs with talc (yes, talc.) The talc will irri­tate the pleura. The pleura is a two part struc­ture, with one part lining the inside of the chest, and the other cov­er­ing the lungs. Being irri­tated, these two struc­tures will bind to one another.

In short, they plan to make my insides bleed so that they will stick together. Or, more accu­rately, scab together.

As stated above, I’ll be keep­ing a diary and, if at all pos­si­ble, updat­ing this page live. I’ll cer­tainly be taking as many gory pho­tographs as pos­si­ble, and attempt­ing to secure a video of the whole procedure.

Posted at 3pm on 20/08/02 by Jack Mottram to the misc. category.
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