Excerpts from some of my emails from the hospital:
Been a little busy. I came down with "spontaneous pneumothorax".
Need details, Google "pneumothorax." Basically it’s a collapsed lung
Here’s what happened.
No warning!
In an effort to get ready for my self proclaimed cave diving season, which runs at the end of baseball season to the start of it (in between my games and my son’s games I’ve done tune up dives at Dutch Springs, Pa.) I started running again beginning of the month, once a week for 2 weeks, started less than 3 miles because it felt like I was carrying someone while I was running, the 3rd week, ran Sunday 11/15/09 started feeling good doing it, so I decided to make it twice a week, ran again Tue 11/17/09 [ at ] 10:30, felt much better, no longer dragging my ass, not as tired, no longer out of breath.
Went to work that night, Wednesday 11/18/09 [ at ] around 0300, (working with someone named Jerry, backing up a wrench, removing fwd mounting bolts on (A320) V2500 engine change, torque already broken, I wasn’t putting much pressure, just keeping the bolt from spinning, the most maybe 20-25 lbs of force) I thought I experienced a rib cage muscle pull, dull deep pain behind my back, just below my left shoulder blade, the pain wasn’t incapacitating, but what scared me was the pain move to the left side of my chest, I suddenly had trouble breathing, coughing followed , I thought to the point that I was about to pass out, I stopped moving and stood there just trying to catch my breath, told no one that this was happening, hoped nobody noticed maybe because I was in denial that something was wrong, went to lunch at around 04:00, took 2 aspirins because I thought if it was a heart attack it would help, rested for about a hour, felt much better after lunch. Continued on like nothing happened. Friday 11/20/09, went to see a movie with my wife, had to run out and feed the parking meter, ran across the street no more than 30 to 40 yards and I was gasping for breath, heart pumping, got out of the movies and made my appointment with the doctor. Didn’t see the doctor till this pass Monday 11/30/09, right away my doctor had me see a pulmonary specialist same afternoon, x-ray showed it, the specialist had me go to ER the next morning. 3 doctors (including the specialist) told me they couldn’t tell I had it just by listening to my chest, they only saw it through the x-ray and CT scan showed it was a bigger collapse.
They installed a drain tube on my chest to suction out the air in the pleural space, which helps expand my lungs, but the air leak in my lungs didn’t stop leaking till the 5 th day, in which case they recommended surgery to fix the problem.
Here I am still here in the hospital, waiting to have surgery Monday 12/7/09 [ at ] 07:30.
As scheduled, they performed a VATS (video-assisted thoracic surgical) Pleuradesis on my left lung, I was finally discharged from the hospital Monday 12/14/09.
From the looks of it according to the DAN website, my diving passion is pretty much over. I haven’t told my cavediving buddy (Sheck) yet since he’s still hoping I’ll be back diving again in about 6 months.
ROGUEDIVER No more, just Fernando |