I've had multiple spontaneous pneumothoraxes in both lungs. My left lung was corrected surgically, the second time, with a Vaccuum-assisted thoracostomy. That one took. My right lung wasn't so easily fixed and required thoracic surgery. Not fun. They basically cut you open along the ribs below your shoulder blade, pop you open, and manually attach the lung to the inside of the chest cavity(there are probably technical words for this but I'm too lazy to google them.) Recovery time was 10 days in hospital, 9-days of which the morphine prevented me from pooping and the last day was recovering from finally pooping. This was followed by close to a year of physio to get my right side back in shape. Seven years later I'm still numb along the incision site and my muscles look very weird below my shoulder blade.
Best of luck to this never happening to you again. My understanding is if it happens once, you have about a 30% chance of it happening again, but if it does happen again you have a 100% chance that it will continue to recur.
jayemdee5 karma
I've had multiple spontaneous pneumothoraxes in both lungs. My left lung was corrected surgically, the second time, with a Vaccuum-assisted thoracostomy. That one took. My right lung wasn't so easily fixed and required thoracic surgery. Not fun. They basically cut you open along the ribs below your shoulder blade, pop you open, and manually attach the lung to the inside of the chest cavity(there are probably technical words for this but I'm too lazy to google them.) Recovery time was 10 days in hospital, 9-days of which the morphine prevented me from pooping and the last day was recovering from finally pooping. This was followed by close to a year of physio to get my right side back in shape. Seven years later I'm still numb along the incision site and my muscles look very weird below my shoulder blade.
Best of luck to this never happening to you again. My understanding is if it happens once, you have about a 30% chance of it happening again, but if it does happen again you have a 100% chance that it will continue to recur.
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