My Double Lung Transplant

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A good conversation starter

*two people sitting in a clinic waiting room, waiting for their appts*

Patient 1: I have a hole in my heart..

Patient 2: I have holes in my lungs. Wanna be friends?

Is that sick? Is that twisted? I think it's pretty funny to be honest. No, this didn't actually happen to me, I just thought of it b/c i'm an evil genius. You have to find humour in this stuff b/c if you don't, it will eat you alive and you will dwell on it. Yesterday when the doctor reiterated to me that my lungs are 'destroyed', and 'full of holes', i didn't feel myself sink into a pit of sadness. I commended her (in my brain)for getting across the actual severity of my disease. It's one thing to know how i feel, and guess how my lungs look, but it's another to see their CT and xray pic and see the crappy results on the other end. To stare in the face of my disease was pretty....weird. My xrays have always looked shitty but this was kind of disgusting. She also told me that lungs most likely are stuck to my ribs and they said they won't know for sure till they 'open [me] up', but that they will 'have the scrapers ready' to scrape them off... So thanks doctor, who i hope is out there looking for a pair of extra small lungs and fighting to bump my status up on the list! Play on, play on!!!

Lastnight I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed, kept awake by the sounds emitting themselves from the rainforest that are my lungs. There were crackles, wheezes, whizzing sounds, and most recently, snapping.

Yup, a lung snap, at the front in my upper right lobe right under my colar bone (where the colar bone meets in the middle!) I didn't need a stethoscope to hear it, i could hear it loud and clearly enough without, and if i put two fingers on the spot i could feel it easily. It felt like snapping; like an airway opening and closing that was full of fluid or something.

And it wouldn't stop.

It kept going.

I tried beating myself (chest physio therapy) to no avail. I tried coughing and failed, so i resorted to getting angry, huffing and puffing and rolling around violently in bed.

And then i coughed, and pop! goes a lung burst. That's what i'm going to call them now: whenever my lungs pop and an airway pops open and creates a hole, it will now and forever be known as a lung burst (yes, inspired by a star burst, thank you). So yup, i listened to the clicking, sticking, poping, snapping, and lung burstings in my lungs and overall, falling asleep was turning out to be a total bitch.

But i slept.

I have physio tomorrow. Another day consisting of waking up at an ungodly hour. Oh well. Debbie told me that I should tell everyone at physio that I have holes in my lungs, to further myself along in our society of ill individuals, so I said that i will wear a sandwich board announcing "I HAVE HOLES" to get across just how important I am. Above and beyond all others *wink*.

Hope you're all well!:)

2 comments:

Meghann "Former Queen of the O2 People" said...

Hello lousy lungs partner in crime. I'm going to start calling you Miss Snap, Crackle, and Pop! :) Nice post!!

Megan said...

I'm working on a sologan for us poor sods who have/had pleurisy:
'Welcome to pleurisy, it sucks, and you're pretty much fucked.'

Nice ey?! Oh and the patient convo, yes I found that funny too. And I also think its weird that I found it funny Xx