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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 25 July 2002 (Day View) – Pneumothorax

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25.07.2002 – Thursday 25 July – Reoccurrence of Pneumothorax

• I went for a walk out to Joneses, leaving around 3:30. I was late so I was jogging up the hills and walking down them. When I was about halfway, as I was jogging up a hill, I cleared my throat. It was then that my lung either began to hurt, or possibly I just noticed it for the first time then. It’s not unusual for my lung to hurt; it has done so ever since my first pneumothorax. I wasn’t too worried, waiting for it to get better.
  It didn’t. Shan rode Ella’s motorbike out and I met him when I was about ¾ of the way out to Home Rule. My lung was hurting a fair bit by now, and I was getting pretty worried. I walked slowly, with a few rests, out to Joneses with Shan pushing Ella’s motorbike. I then sat down in Shan’s room for an hour or two, hoping against hope that my lung would get better, but all the time realising that it felt just the same as last time it collapsed. After a while I got Shan to drive me back up to home in Jade’s car. It was in the car, when going over bumps and it still felt just the same as last time, when I remembered how it felt being driven into hospital last time, that I realised I did indeed have yet another collapsed.
  I went on the ’net and sent an email to my teachers and another to Becky, and then Mum drove me into hospital. After a short wait, Dr Michael came and Clay took my x-ray. It is a 10 to 15% pneumothorax. It is basically the same as last time. We had a little chat with the doctor and then drove home again. Silas and Gus are here. I am going to get a lift to Cairns with them and try to see the doctors at the thoracic clinic, and have the pleurodesis operation. Basically a hole cut into my lung, fill the cavity with talc, roll me about so it gets evenly distributed, and suck the air out and sew the hole up. Sounds easy. It has to be done in Townsville apparently.
  I phoned Dad, who is at Lois’s in Perth, and arranged to meet him tomorrow in Cairns as he is flying back. I then went on the ’net and am planning to stay up late and hopefully get so tired that I can actually sleep, as I am scared to sleep. I am pretty scared of the whole ordeal actually. When I had my chest drain fitted for one of my prior collapses, they cut a hole through my ribs and into my lung cavity, without anaesthetic. Painful isn’t the right word. It was agony. It wasn’t too bad the first time because I didn’t realise what was going to happen, but I don’t know how I could put up with that again. Just thinking about it gives me the willies.
  Everything gets more complicated now. This will probably mean I have no hope of studying enough to sit my exams this year, and they can’t be put off. I will have to sit them the same time next year. This means that I may have to stay here another year and not leave for Brisbane or whatever I had planned to do. This means that I might wish to get the satellite Internet installed, which means that I need to decide that before the second of August, however I will probably be in some hospital then. Then there’s my beetabs in quarantine, which needed some phone calls and soon.
  And no doubt there are more things that I haven’t yet thought of.
  I am very touched. Mum phoned Sarah, who cried and told Mum to tell me she loves me very much. Then Becky cried. I am really touched. Everyone is more upset than I am. It is nice to feel cared for and loved.