I've had everyone asking me what happened, so I figure it'll be easier to tell the story like this.
I was doing dishes Saturday, reached up to put a pot away and felt a muscle pain in my back. This wasn't surprising as I had been sore for a couple days from my Wed. ultimate game. A few minutes later, walking out the door to head to the first UT football game of the year, I felt the same strange pain but a little stronger. I told Melissa with a smiling cringe that something was wrong. We made it over to campus by the river and I called Dad and found out where he was. I decided I wanted a drink and made my way to Ray's Place for a vending machine. For those not familiar with UT campus, the elevation difference from the river to the Hill is a couple hundred feet. Heading up, I had to stop several times not only for the unbearable pain, but also because I couldn't seem to breathe. It felt to me like I had such a bad knot in my back muscles that every time I breathed, it somehow compressed the knot to make the pain worse. We made it down to “Salute to the Hill” and I got to show off the marching band that I was a member of so many years ago to Melissa. We found Dad and Janet after the crowd thinned out. First thing, I told Janet that I needed a nurse and how my back hurt badly and I couldn’t breathe. Nobody could figure it out so I went on thinking it would work itself out eventually. Running into Uncle Dusty, we found out Dad had an extra ticket. While trying to scalp the other half of a pair for me and Melissa, an elderly man came up to me and handed me a ticket. “How much?” I asked. He said, “free. You’ll be sitting with my family, so act straight.” I thanked him and shook hands before he walked off. I started the climb up the walkway where Melissa realized it was the uphills that were hurting me so badly. I made it through the game without the pain getting too much worse. Sometime, I was just barely in tears, others I was standing and yelling with the rest of the crowd. I jokingly told Janet that I had a collapsed lung, and she laughed saying that I wouldn’t be talking if that were the case.
Looking for the first ride out of there, we all left in the third quarter and walked for miles to Dad and Janet’s car. At this point, I was taking mouth sized breaths and wiping tears from my face. I could barely keep up, and Dad thought this was a good time to make fun of how I was walking trying to keep my right shoulder rigid, calling me Frankenstein. After I knew I couldn’t make it, we got a cab to bring me and Melissa back to my apartment. I just wanted to lie down so badly. When I finally did, I felt like a brick was rolling around in my right chest as I changed orientation. I decided I wanted to lay in the tub, and it did seem to help. I put pressure on the knotted muscles in my back, and felt a shot of pain go through my whole body followed by my lungs closing. After a few seconds of terror, I could clearly hear wheezing in my right lung. I got dressed and finally let Melissa take me to UT hospital.
Check in: 10min. Waiting on triage nurse: 10min. Examination:20 min. He asked me how I felt about pneumonia but also told me that I fit the profile for a pneumothorax: tall, thin, male, 20-30y/o. He seemed to doubt himself and sent me to billing. Waiting on billing 10min. Dealing with billing:20min while I was crying uncontrollably and Melissa had to take care of everything. WAITING AREA:20min sitting there dying. Finally they get me a room and I told the whole story three times to three different people. EKG showed nothing. Oxygen allowed me to stop gasping so much. The doctor was too focused on finding out what illicit drugs I was on to do anything for my pain. They sent me off to get a chest x-ray, parking me in the hallway alone and dying. Melissa had to stay in the room so the doctor could continue asking if I had done any drugs. I was so much happier when I got back to the room to not be alone. Later the doctor came in all smug, “We found out why you can’t breathe and what is causing all your pain. You have a pneumothorax and you will have to get surgery to have a chest tube put in.” I’m expecting to be wheeled off to a sterile room, instead about ten people pile into my room and start setting up. I was talking with the surgeon the whole time she was setting up then telling them they should move the blood pressure cuff to the other arm. I was given local anesthetic and something so that I “wouldn’t freak out”. I was fully conscious, aware, and on no pain meds when she cut into me. The really traumatic part of it was that she never let up for even a split second, so I was never able to catch even a little breath. The drowning sensation was worse that the pain that was causing my toes to almost pop as I was curling them like a fist. I have no memory of what happened after they all left and Melissa came back in. Next thing I remember, Dad and Janet were also there. I laid in the ER room for hours, crying in pain and very depressed.
I finally got a room and was put on a rotation of morphine and Percocet. Every morning at 6 the doctor would stop in. At about 8 I’d get an x-ray. The first day I was on suction, next it was kept sealed, and the third they removed the chest tube. I broke down when I found out my mom wasn’t coming. The morphine wasn’t working well so I asked to switch to a 2hr rotation of a lower dose of Percocet. To do so, they took me off of all my medicine from 1am to 8am the second night except for morphine at 6am. I literally stared at the clock with each loud click for hours crying just waiting for them to come bring me something. But, I had many great friends come visit, Dad and Janet were there every day, and Melissa stayed with me the entire 4 days. The cause completely unknown except that a bleb ruptured releasing air. I have a 40% chance of this happening again, meaning my life is going to be changing dramatically. Thanks again Melissa, Dad, and Janet.
