Pop Goes My Lung: Finally Free!

There's a certain sense of humility that comes with your mom wiping your butt at the age of 25.

[ Pop Goes My Lung Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 ] 

But, the alternative was my male nurse doing it. And while Nurse Josh kicked ass, I didn't really want him in the literal vicinity of my ass. So, every potty break my lovely mother was graced with the task of official TP'er.

TMI? Letsbereal, you'd all be in the EXACT same position had your vital organ spontaneously pneumoethorax'ed itself.

Anyways, on to less obtrusive topics, following surgery the respiratory nurses came in every few hours to get me to blow into this machine to test my lung and prevent pneumonia or something. I don't remember. I do remember I hated her. HATED. I would cry and moan and beg them to go away because that machine was the most painful thing I had ever been asked to do (I'm allowed to say this because I've never been asked to PUSH while birthing a child, obviously that would trump all)

I logged another weekend at the hospital, watched a snowstorm from my third floor window, puked up everything I tried to eat, and abused the heck out of the morphine drip on my IV. The weekend sucked. Worse than the weekend before where I just leisurely lounged in the other hospital, unaware my lung was being a little conniving jerk not healing on it's own.

I had so many tubes hooked up to me I felt like a science fair experiment. I couldn't even move in my bed without needing help to rearrange everything. Getting up to try and sit in my chair was an event in and of itself. "Roll'er outta bed!"

 

After a few days I was finally able to move enough to get out of bed and attempt walking. I felt like Baby Bambi toddling around the halls.

I continued to have chest x-rays daily, and I was graced with awesome xray techs who let me sneak peeks of them. My lung seemed to be doing what they wanted it to, and they took me off the wall suction. We all held our breath (ha, had to do it) that my lung would remain inflated on it's own without the help of the suction!

Finally on that dreary Monday morning, my most favorite resident doctor, Luis, came in with a nurse and two biohazard bags. With a big grin on his face, he announced he'd be taking out my chest tube! This was it! That meant my lung was reinflated! I was healed! My grin grew to rival his. Until he started putting latex gloves on and prepping the area, and I realized he would be taking out that chest tube, without any numbing or knocking me out.

I think I may have broken the bones in my mom's hand squeezing them so tightly. But after a few seconds, and the weirdest sensation I have ever felt, suddenly I no longer had a plastic tube shoved into my rib cage!

They removed my IV's and art-lines, they (gasp) let me lose the hospital gown, and put on real clothes for the first time in two weeks. They had me sign some forms, set me up for an appointment two weeks later, told me not to go jump out of any airplanes, and just like that sent me on my way.

Of course, as with all things in my life, I should have known this would not go as smoothly as expected. I'm Chelsea. I can't just have a gaping hole in my lung one week, and be fine the next.