Pleurodesis & Pneumothorax

[YoungKickstand]

For something that i've never heard until a year ago i have noticed more and more people who have had a Pneumothorax, and was just wondering if any of you guys have had the same problem.

I had about four different Spontaneous Pneumothoraxs which pretty much just means a hole in your lung. They were always on my left side and each time caused about a 30 to 40 percent collapse of the lung. I always knew when they happened cause to anyone else its happened to you know the pain its very unique. Other then hurting like hell they always made me short of breath and just in general made me very worn out. After the third time my doctor made me go to a specialist to get a Pleurodesis surgery which is where they get rid of your Pleural space essentially attaching your lung to the inside of your chest with scar tissue. I had both a Chemical, where they inject chemicals like talc to irritate the tissue to get scar tissue to form, and Mechanical, where they use something similar to sandpaper and cause the tissue to inflame.

The surgery was painful as hell i ended up getting dilaudid through IV every four hours and a dilaudid pill every six hours on top of that. So besides all the pain it was actually kinda of interesting cause i was out of my mind from the drugs lol especially when they give me phenogrin i become completely delusional.

The worst part of the whole things was when they had to remove my chest tube. They pretty much just count to three then pull it right out. Which im a small guy and that tube was at least a guy six inches in my chest so once they pulled it out i could feel everything shifting back in place. Still sends shivers down my spine thinking about.. It also caused me to go into shock from the pain, but bear in mind it was time for my IV right after that but i was still on the pill.

Also i ended up having to get cathetered twice because after the first time i still couldn't go to the bathroom.. Hurts much more the second time around by the way lol.

Overall it was an experience never want to do it again but i'll never forget it thats for sure.

[IGoeOn]

I had a pneumothorax second to a car accident back in '99. It is an exquisite pain and makes my top five - I posted that on some other thread. They had to intubate me twice - once from the dorsal aspect and then laterally. The pain was, simply put, shocking. I also couldn't get over how they remove the tube. I was pretty drugged up, too - had numerous injuries. My memory is that the doc just yanked the gd thing out and it whipped around my body. It was INSANE.

I cannot imagine having a spontaneous pneumothorax - that's just freaky.

Ahem. I am not a medical person. I am pretty sure I don't mean dorsal - the first insertion was right above my left breast - a little towards the middle. Just to clarify. . .

[YoungKickstand]

Yea they think what initially set me up for mine was a car accident i got into about three years ago. That sucks they had to itubate twice once was more then enough for me.

My doctor did the same damn thing lol. He walked in and was like there is really only one way to do this told me to get ready and then just pulled it out no counting or anything. He said they have to do it that way cause there isn't really a way to get you prepared so they just yank it.

It really is pretty freaky it just comes out of nowhere. One minute your fine then bam a rush of pain that doesn't really go away. I had to walk around the first time for about a month with it before they finally figured out what happened. Went from walking pneumonia to pleurisy to they finally noticed a big portion of my lung was missing in the X-ray

[YoungKickstand]

Ahem. I am not a medical person. I am pretty sure I don't mean dorsal - the first insertion was right above my left breast - a little towards the middle. Just to clarify. . .

Yea mine was right under my left breast. still have a pretty gross scar from that, but the ones on my back from where they went in our worse. Looks like i got stabbed lol

[need2losewt]

I had Pneumothorax of the left lung last year. The worst part for me was the insertion of the chest tube. The lung re-inflating was quite painful back in the area of my shoulder blade. The lung was only partially collapsed but would not re-inflate on its own so I had to get the chest tube. I didn't find the removal of the tube nearly as bad as the insertion, but that was just my experience.