2 days ago, my lung collapsed while browsing Reddit. AMA!

Did something you see take your breath away?

Believe it or not, I have not met a single person that made that joke yet. Thank you for making it right.

Unfortunately, there is no preventing this. If it happens more than three times on the same lung, they can "superglue your lungs to your rib cage" as the doctor eloquently put it to me. Not a super fun procedure. On the bright side though, the chances of it happening again after you're 25-26 yrs old is virtually nil. I suppose either the blebs finally seal themselves, or your lungs man-up.

Based on my own personal multiple experiences 15-20 years ago, here's what not to do:

1. Don't travel 50 miles from town to work on an old Spanish teacher's computer problems at her house.
2. Don't drink root beer while playing chess with your brother in law.
3. Don't try to read the instructions of a hotel waffle maker.
4. Don't announce a Red Hot Chili Peppers song coming up after a break in your new temporary radio job.
5. Don't show up late for debate class.

Perhaps the one piece of advice I can leave you with that seemed to be a commonality was breathing in too suddenly. Don't do it.

Also, those sharp instant pains that very rarely occur that will throw you to the floor when you're older than 25? Doctors won't have a clue what's wrong with you, and it's not your lung collapsing.

Enjoy your life, fellow young skinny, likely successful type-A personality! See a doctor about your future heartburn issues (hint: protonix), and that clicking in your heart is mitral valve prolapse. It means nothing.

Dude, I love RHCP and I get heartburn if I drink hard liquor on a full stomach........It's begun! NOOOOOO

How's Tomb Raider?

Impressed so far. Especially how well it runs on my pc.

Sounds breathtaking.

They should put warning labels on those things.

did the docs say why it collapsed?

Because I'm "a tall, slim, male" was what most people said. Others said it could be connected to the cold. I say it's because I'm so tough that my lung collapsed in fear of my might.

I work in an ER, and I hate spontaneous pneumo's like your case; I'm 6'5 185 and all you do is make me wonder what the invisible clock on the bomb inside my lungs reads.

It's like covering yourself in dinosaur pee. You're surrounded by collapsed lungs, so they won't be able to find you.

EDIT My first gold! Thank you!

What?

pain meds.

You said you're on pain meds so excuse the syntax errors.

What else are you on, bro?
:)

prune juice and jell-o #thuglyfe

How tall, and how slim?

I know this sounds random, but try making a circle around your wrist with your thumb and forefinger - can you get your thumb and forefinger to overlap?

Edit: Correction - thumb and pinkie.

6'3, 175lbs~

my finger and thumb juuust about touch tips.

My exact weight and height.

|Scared now

its okay buddy, I'll be there.

I had this happen to me about 2 years ago. Apparently this happens because "tall, skinny" males are born with blebs; small air pockets on top of the lung that can easily rupture.

That's what they're called! I was just trying to remember what they were calling them. I kept calling them 'Bilbos', but I realized there was no way a hobbit was in my chest.

Therein lies the next problem though.... how to prevent this from happening again.

EDited grammar

You sure there are no hobbits in your chest? I heard they are a mysterious people.

I suppose...

You probably can't prevent it, but the next time it happens, you'll know what it is right away. Then they'll probably do a pleurodesis, which is putting a scope into the space between your lung and chest wall, and putting talc in there. That scars the pleural space shut so your lung can't collapse.

A lady in the waiting room had that done. But she had the thing where the chest cavity was filled with fluid. Put in talc, and it never bothered her again.

pulm/cc doc here. minimize the opiates and get on a regimen of around the clock nsaids - motrin q4-6 hours works great. most of your pain is pleuritic in nature and opiates suck at dulling that and simply put you to sleep. use the opiates for bad breakthrough pain only. use this for a few days and get them to start you on a ppi like nexium or h2 blocker like famotidine.

keep the oxygen on - even though you don't technically need it, it will help wash out the nitrogen within the pneumothorax faster.

push them to get you out of bed and walking around asap. use your incentive spirometer and make sure until you're out of bed that you have DVT prophylaxis going.

i'm sure you'll be fine. i treat at least 1-2 of you young skinny guys a week. good luck.

I understood none of that, but I will ask them about some of this. I do know that I'm taking Norco. not sure if thats good. I have been getting up to use the bathroom, and they used some sort of leg massager thing on my legs so I don't get clots.

Tall, skinny male here (or I was at the time of this happening, 5' 11" and like 145lbs?). I don't mean to hijack your AMA, but want to share my experience and recovery with you.

I was sitting in my Aero 215 class about 6-7 years ago and had this happen to my left side. Thought it was heart burn or a pinched nerve in my back. Then it kept getting harder to breath and A LOT more painful. So I walk out of class and thought about catching a bus to the hospital. I get out the front doors of the Aero building, think I might be having a heart attack and decided to call an ambulance instead.

They sliced open my side in the ER under local anesthesia and stuck in a small chest tube. That didn't seem to do the trick and 3 days of hospital later, they put in a much larger tube (more like a garden hose). Another 3 days of hospital and a lot of drugs later, I was able to go home.

Some interesting thoughts on my recovery since then:

• I am super paranoid about any chest pains. Heart burn and pinched nerves in my back/neck make me anxious as all hell that I'm relapsing.

• I get pains around the scar on my side, most likely from the scar tissue. This makes me anxious.

• I can never go scuba diving every again. This is what they told me in the hospital. I was all drugged up and didn't ask why. I'm assuming because of the positive pressure and my seemingly weak lungs. This made doing some hypoxia training (where they give you O2 via positive presure) for a flight test job pretty interesting. Positive pressure = forcing air into your lungs.

• I was also very nervous to do any flying, but the job I had above had me flying in experimental aircraft at 40kft. So I had to just man up and trust my lungs would hold.

• I still get kind of nervous flying.

• There is some literature that would advise against high altitude hiking if you've had this happen. I've hiked 13k peak and spent a lot of time above 10k. This also makes me a bit nervous, especially when you're in the backcountry.

• Although its caused me quite a bit of anxiety, I've never had another issue. I've had a few chest x-rays taken since the incidence and there have been no signs of any problems.

Hope this may help in your experience and recovery. Cheers.

Holy shit. I generally stay pretty close to sea level, but that scuba thing is a bummer, I've never been, but maybe I still can if I'm lucky. I read another comment about not inhaling quickly. Have you ever had that problem? I sing, and it's kinda a package deal.

Holy crap, they actually admitted you for a lung collapse so small that they could use a Heimlich Valve?! That's nuts.

I had a lung collapse about 3ish years ago, and I was in and out of the hospital in one night. I got the same explanation though: "Sometimes it just happens to tall, skinny guys."

Best of luck to you!

Not sure if my whole right lung collapsing counts as small. I'm actually hooked up to a suction machine, through the Heimlich valve.

EDIT: nodded off, forgot to thank you for the best wishes.

I am scared now, this is the second. "It happens to tall skinny males" post. I scared because I am tall skinny male.

The sacrifice must be made.....Virgin chickens and all that.

Would you rather fight one horse sized lung, or 100 lung sized horses?

It....it can't be

EDIT forgot to answer actual question: horse sized lung. I've defeated a lung once, and I can do it again.

Why would they suction air out of a collapsed lung? Shouldn't they be pumping air in?

EMT here. A pneumothorax occurs when air enters the chest cavity, collapsing the negative pessire balance that allows your lungs to inflate. The chest cavity is normally isolated from the pleural space by a membrane. The cause for this in an emergency setting is usually external puncture to the chest or a flail segment of ribs that has punctured the membrane. Sometimed it can also happen with excessive fluid buildup. The goal is to suck the crap out to restore the empty space rather than pushing air in like a balloon.

So do they need to do surgery to reseal the membrane?

If it happens again, then yes. if it's a first time collapse, it can normally reseal itself. at least that what I got from all the doctor speak.

Would it eventually works its way back? Ie if it happened in 1800 were you screwed?

They said with a total collapse, if left untreated I could have died. :|

They're sucking the air out of the cavity around my lungs. If i understand correctly, my lung is the balloon, and the glass cover is my chest cavity.

mine inflated about just was fast, felt really weird.

I've had my lung collapse on me before, they insert a needle to drain the air out. Shit that was a scary experience for me, how do you feel right now?

And don't worry, taking it out is easy, you practically don't feel anything if you cough right when he pulls it out.

I was on quite a few different drugs when I got my tube installed. I had a smile on my face the whole time, but I gotta say, seeing the scalpel and the needle closing in on my body was pretty scary.

I've got some cramping feeling where the tube goes in, and the suction machine, isn't helping. My ass is a little tender (context!) from trying to pass a very unpleasant guest.

Glad that the removal isn't so bad. I was worried I wouldn't be getting any local anesthetics and that it would hurt.

What did it feel like? Were you scared?

Well there is a family history of heart disease, so when I have any sort of chest pain (even if it's on the wrong side) I was scared shitless. I was actually kind of relieved to hear it was a collapsed lung. It's happened to other family members and they came out of it fine.

It felt like there was a huge amount of pressure in my chest cavity. If I tried laying down I feel something "flop around" inside me. The really weird feeling was when they re-inflated my lung.

Congratulations for being alive.

I'd like to thank the academy.....

The exact same thing happened to me about 3 months ago. The first time it happened they put a tube in just like you have. I was in the hospital for a couple of days while my lung reinflated then it was good for another 2 weeks. Then it happened again and then I opted for an operation called a pleurodesis which fuses the 2 pleurae in the chest. That wasn't as pleasant as the first time in hospital as the lung had to be scarred and the chest tube was a lot bigger than the first time. But there was lots of morphine so it was ok. The reason for my pneumothorax was that I was "tall and thin and male".

ffffffffffuck. Same exact thing happened to a friend of my cousin's. I crossing my fingers in hopes that it doesn't happen to me.

Raises hand

Yes, I have a question! How do I avoid this condition?

quick remove the lungs before it finds you!

So after the incident, do you still have contact with said lung or did you two just decide to go separate ways?

we're going to counseling.

How hard was it to breathe with only one functional lung? I'd think that the shock of having chest pain would have exacerbated the problem and give you a sense of even shorter breath.

That and being scared from thinking it was a heart problem all made for some very concerned EMTs.

I felt light headed the whole time. It felt like what I imagine drowning is like. you're trying your hardest to fill your lungs, but there's nothing you can do about it. The worst part though, was not being able to lie down and sleep...worst pain I have ever felt.

Not being able to breathe is the worst sensation ever. Hope you recover quick!

Same here. Thank you!

It just seems so nonchalant the way you put it in your previous posts. I'd imagine a scenario where you're on reddit and, "Oops lung collapsed, better call the EMTs."

I wish I was so cool about it! I was freaking out for 9 hours till I went to urgent care. That's when the EMTs were called, cause the doctor thought my right heart valve was expanding.

My thumb and forefinger overlap 2x when wrapped around my penis. Am I cursed to ugly women?

if its really long, you could fold it in two. use it doubled up

Hey man,

I've had about 15 pneumothoraxes in my time. When I eventually go surgery I got this cool contraption to blow into, indicating how my well my lung was doing. So my question is, did you also get that thing, and if you did, isn't it awesome?

I received no such device. The headmaster of this hospital will get quite the talking to.

Get earphones and an app which plays white noise. Listen to that (with a tshirt over your head) if the excitement of the hospital keeps you awake

I might have to use this. My roommate is kinda insane.

Similar thing happened to me when I was about 17. This was 15 years ago now and I've been perfectly fine. I actually had to have surgery to remove and repair the blebs on my right lung. Got some nice looking scars to remind me of the whole ordeal.

Have a speedy recovery friend.

Thank you very much.

Were you on the front page or a sub reddit?

r/tumblrinaction

This happened to my brother a few years ago. Twice, at that. If it's any consolation, he's run half marathons and 5Ks since the collapses, so it's likely you'll be back to your old self in no time.

Get well soon!

Makes me feel a lot better. I'm more the singing type, but lungs are lungs. Thank you!

I feel stupid, but I'm curious.

When one lung collapses, does your second give you enough oomph to make it somewhere? I mean obviously walking around with a collapsed lung is super not cool but is this one of those times where having a pair of something comes in handy?

Also I fear for my tall skinny husband now based on the other comments in this thread. :/

i could move, but i sure as hell didnt want to

I'm an EMT and I'm curious about your symptoms of pain. Was the pain steady? Worse on inspiration? Worse on expiration?

I want to be SMRT when I meet my next tall skinny male.

constant pain at about 5/10 inhaling was about 7/10. laying down was the worst pain I've ever felt.

I'm curious about your first worst bout of constipation

It was only a matter of time...

Taking a road trip with my family, hadn't gone in about 4 days. took a laxative to move things along. I managed to push some past the upper sphincter but not the lower. So I had a huge duce trapped in the twilight zone between my two sphincters for about 45 minutes. finally got it out. the next day was wrought with the "i need to shit" shakes cause the half dose of ex-lax worked a little to well.

been a redditor for months...

makes new username for AMA....

you got some splaining to do!

I'm......I'm into some weird shit, kay?

Do you stay active or do you just reddit and game all the time?

Normally I try to stay active. Go on walks through the neighborhood, play with my dogs, but like most people, I could probably use some more.

unless you mean now with a collapsed lung, in which case, yeah, reddit, games and popping pills. #rockstarlyfe

I, too, had a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) a month ago or so while driving on my right lung. That shit hurt. Then they put a tube in my chest to get the air out. That shit also hurt.

Yea but did shitting hurt? The drugs I got to reduce shit hurting dehydrated me and made it hurt to shit. I can't imagine it happening while I was driving.

Oh man I had this last summer. No question, but what helps against the pain is breathing with your belly instead of with your shoulders. Don't know if this helps you, but it sure helped me sleep at night

I'll keep that in mind.

Someone discovered r/spacedicks for the first time!

I actually found it about 2 days before this happened. Delayed reaction I guess!

What subreddit caused the collapse?

if i remember correctly, it was r/tumblrinaction