The Lung Thing

Well, you can see I am at home again today. This is my fourth sick day in 3 weeks. It’s fuckin’ crazy.

Last night, I woke up with extreme back pain which restricted me from taking a full breath. Right next to the spine on the left side, almost like it’s directly behind my heart. With all the coughing I’ve been doing this past 2 weeks, I feared I might have popped my lung again. Oh please God, don’t let the 2000 Great Lung Collaspe episode repeats itself! One chest tube scar is enough. But the pain and shortness of breath felt way too familiar. The thought didn’t help my breathing.

So, after struggling to calm down and hoping that it was a muscle spasm for good 10 minutes, at 3 a.m. I woke Brandon up and we hit the emergency room.

A lung x-ray later and a few prodding later, no pneumothorax. But the ER doctor thinks it’s a case of pleurisy – an inflamamation of the lining around the lung which can cause sharp pain with breathing, coughing, sneezing and movement.

The nurse gave me 2 Tylenol with Codine and I was sent home with an instruction to bed rest and 600 mg Ibuprofen every 6 hours and to limit the coughing. At 4 a.m. we were at the pharmacy, and exactly 20 minutes after I took the codine Tylenol, I felt the effect. The warm and fuzzy and floaty feeling followed soon by the pain leaving. Brandon came back to the car with an industrial sized bottle of Rubistussin and I’m a bit fuzzy after that. But I managed to eat a piece of bread, drank the cough syrup and went to bed.

As of now, the Ibuprofen doesn’t seem to be doing anything. I think I should go back to laying down…

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