It's Nice to Be Home
“My doctor had told me that there was such a thing as a delayed lung collapse; he had read about it in books. Now he can say that he had one of those cases.”
A little more than a week ago, I was writing about my upcoming Radio Frequency Ablation procedure. I said that the worst that could happen would be a collapsed lung, and then said something like, "Not a big deal; I've been through that before." Well, I was wrong. Hugely wrong. Painfully and agonizingly wrong.
The procedure on Tuesday went fine. The X-ray afterward, where they check to make sure you don't have a collapsed lung, was clear, so I came home. But Wednesday evening, I started to have severe pain in my chest and abdomen. It was so intense that I couldn't really take a full breath. I talked to my doctors. We thought it might be a reaction to the medication, a collapsed lung or maybe even a broken rib. So I gritted my teeth through a long, sleepless, painful night (I know, I should have gone into the hospital right away) and went up to Johns Hopkins on Thursday morning.
By then, they were pretty sure it was a collapsed lung. And sure enough, it was. My doctor had told me that there was such a thing as a delayed lung collapse; he had read about it in books. Now he can say that he had one of those cases. There was only about a 5 percent collapse. But the biggest problem was the pain. I needed to be able to breathe normally. And the RFA makes you cough for a few days afterward. Every cough was like being stabbed.
Pain medication started to help, and then my doctors inserted a chest tube to suck out the excess air causing the collapse. The lung reinflated immediately, but I continued to have problems. Fluid built up around the lung, possibly caused by the irritation of the tube itself, and by the RFA.
Rooms were scarce at the hospital, so by accident I ended up on the VIP floor. Very nice — wood paneling, curtains, free coffee and cookies. It was like staying in a nice hotel, except that the hotel staff woke you up every few hours to take your vital signs. At one point, I was hooked up to what is called "wall suction." A hose was run from my tube to a pump in the wall. That freaked me out a little; I have visions of something going wrong and the machine sucking out a kidney or something.
I had one of those pain medication pumps. You can push the button whenever you feel the need, but it will only give you a dose every ten minutes. I tried not to push it too often. The machine keeps a record and I didn't want to look like I was drug-crazed or anything.
Finally, Saturday afternoon, things started to look good enough that I could go home. I still have the tube in my chest, attached to a cylinder taped to my chest. Taking a shower is something of a challenge. But the pain is better now.
It was an ordeal, but here's the good news: I was being scanned and X-rayed every couple of hours. And in looking at all that, my doctor could see enough to be pretty certain that he has killed those two tumors. That makes going through all of this totally worthwhile. I'll have the third procedure in a couple of weeks.
It was sort of ironic that this happened, and that I missed posting a new blog for the first time ever the day after writing about faking an illness so you could stay home from school. Several of you did point that out in your replies, which made me laugh.
But I want to thank all of you who wrote in with words of encouragement and support. That means so much to me. It's nice to be home.
5:52 AM ET | 02-26-2007 | permalink
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