Community Chat

[Bird mama]

Here's another one from the family vault.

In the early 90's my middle sister's lung spontaneously went down.  Oddly enough the day before, she got a clean bill of health from an annual physical.  She went through the chest catheter thing in one hospital.  She's small boned, they tried the catheter before the chest tube.  She was discharged from that hospital (closest to the house at the time - I was the ambulance driver that night - geez that's another story).

So during the week after she was discharged, she could feel the lung going back down.

She went into the hospital.  Anyone who knows about pneumothorax knows they don't really drug you up.  If they are gonna insert a chest tube, they prefer to crucify while you are wide awake.

Anyway, before the chest tube, the thoracic specialist was on the edge of the bed trying to talk my sister into surgery.  They didn't know what caused it so they wanted to poke around.

My aunt was sitting in the visitor's chair - shaking her head no.  My aunt died in the mid-80's.

My sister chose the chest tube/pump route and it worked.