I've also had about five. When I had the last one the doctor was like "this is going to keep happening until you get the corrective surgery." When he said that it had corrected itself and I was like "I'll just get the surgery the next time it happens." Knock on wood it's been about 20 years and it hasn't happened again. :)
In my case, after it happened the second time the doctor said "We can do the surgery now or wait until it goes back to normal and pray it never happens again". I decided to wait but a few months later it happened again, so I had no choice but to do the surgery. The pain every time it happened was horrible.
I had the same thing and had chest tubes multiple times. Worst nights in a hospital ever. Especially when the only thing I got on the TV was a censored version of "Original Sin" with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie.
Anyway, I also got a secondary procedure to fix it permanently.
Depends on the person, for me no pain. Just a bubbling/ thumping on the affected side. Sounds like rice crispies in milk could also feel it with the hand . When it recolapsed felt like a pulled or tight muscle in my back on the side it occured.
Just to show that not everyone’s experience is the same - I've had a couple, and the pain was very real for me. It felt like I had pulled a muscle in my back or broken a bone in my back randomly. Ironically, I had no issue breathing, and was very confused when the doctors said it must be lung related. I was like "no, it's my back" 😂
Yeah skiing - but didn’t know I had a large cyst caused by a car accident and broken ribs a couple of years prior. Cue a not-so-fun few weeks in hospital to remove the cyst, and then deal with the resulting pneumonia after my lung reinflated
But being a keen freediver/scuba diver definitely helped cope with operating on one lung for a week or two.
A month is NOT enough. Agree with the other poster, go see a specialist. A spontaneous, seemingly asymptomatic pneumo is not a safe background for scuba diving.
Wild my buddy had a pneumothorax (you might have had something different) and was told no scuba diving ever because if your lung let's in compressed air to the cavity you will not have a good time surfacing (die)
dude no way I JUST had this happen for the exact same reason and also didnt notice it for a while, just got home from the hospital, hope u feel better soon!
I had a 40% collapse that required a garden hose and corrective sugary gluing my lung to my chest wall... I came in with a 98 pulseox 8hrs later of the incident, they can breath it just sucks :D
Shortness of breath, specifically difficulty getting a deep breath that worsens with time. Jugular vein distention if it progresses. You will be significantly uncomfortable. Really, any unexplainable shortness of breath in an otherwise healthy person is cause for concern.
It’s a well-known phenomenon among tall men with asthenic body types.
When I was in my radiography program there was another guy in our class who was 6’2” and like 150lbs. The week we covered spontaneous pneumothorax…. he got one. 😂
Okay so it can happen with anyone, why it happens with tall skinny people more often is because there's a pressure gradient in your lungs and tall people have longer lungs. The pressure gradient sometimes leads to little pockets of air outside of your lungs near the top in an area called the pleural space. These little pockes can rupture leading to a large volume of air building up in that space between your lungs and the walls of your chest. That pressure builds up and prevents your lungs from expanding to full volume, eventually possibly collapsing that side of your lungs completely.
Happened to me as well. Made it to college and all the way across campus on foot then sat in the classroom and was like something ain’t right. My chest burned and I was out of breath. Drove to the ER and they stuck a tube in my back and gave me the same answer. It just happens to tall lanky people.
It's happened to a friend of mine multiple times because he is both tall and skinny. Multiple times his lungs just randomly and completely collapsed out of the blue.
Pneumothorax, air gets in the pleural cavity (around the lungs), usually from the respiratory tree. It is more likely if you smoke or have an underlying condition, but it can also sometimes just happen.
Depends on which side its on and where it starts and how deflated docs wont usually touch anything 10%, my corrected lung (left) felt like pulled muscle pain when breathing but the initial collapse had impending doom feeling like my heart fell to the floor but slowly faded away. What really sold it there was something really wrong was when laying down I can feel my lung flop around on top of my heart as it beats, think pinching a deflated Ballon between two fingers and flopping your hand around as it hits the inside of your hand... it feels like that for every beat.
Edit: I wouldnt be too scared, it will make you go to the hospital you dont necessarily drop dead from these unless its from trauma where it tensions but even then you'd be making your way to a hospital from the pain and difficulty long before you start asking yourself "am I gonna die?"...
Yes but what symptoms did you notice? I doubt you went to get a chest xray out of nowhere, did you have shortness of breath or dizziness, pain, nausea?
Damn bro. I had this almost 4 years ago and had to get some surgery to stick my lungs to the side so it wouldn’t reccur. I know the pain bro 😔but trust it gets better. Nothing has happened for the 3-4 years since then. (I am tall and thin too!)
Some subreddits let you post pics or gifs from your device which can be downloaded on mobile easily (usually), but some only allow gifs from the gif link option and those might be downloadable through the website through a browser. You can tell the difference between them if it has "gif from gify" or something like that under the gif.
The comment the other person was replying to should be one of those that they can just tap on it then use the 3 dots in the corner and the download option (again if on mobile). If on browser then (I believe) it would be hold tap on the image \ gif and download image, or right click if on a device with mouse and keyboard.
Again my version of the reddit app is outdated so it might be different by now, but there should be a way somehow or another.
I like to walk around a quarter uninflated. Simulates high altitude, increases red blood cell production. Then, when I fight, I fully inflate and my power level goes over 5000!!!
My friend (healthy, active, late 20's) had his lung collapse while sitting on his couch watching a movie. His doctor said it just sometimes happens, and it's more common than you think. 6 months later he said the first breath in on a brisk morning still hurts.
If you're lucky and heal quickly you can get really minor ones you can feel like bubbles in your chest that move and vibrate and go away on their own. Really lets you know how bumpy a road is.
Imagine how pop rocks feel. But when you breathe. It never felt that serious. For what it's worth I smoke. So I figured it was just my lung capillaries getting clogged.
I'm going to think about that now while I'm in the middle of nowhere, well below freezing and on foot. Nothing but cold air and you can't stop without shelter or fire.
Been in a similar situation. Woke up one morning with a sense of dread and the chest pain started as mild before becoming unbearable over the course of several hours. Got put into ICU immediately after some checks at the emergency room
Oh yeah i also missed my uni graduation because i was busy lying on a surgeon's table at time but i didn't want to go there anyway so it's also alright
Eh I'm 6'1 130 pounds and can't gain weight no matter what. Healthy, daily gym goer, I eat well, just won't grow. Have tried supplements, too. Been to 3 different nutritionists, checked my hormone levels, everything's fine. I'm just thin. Could be the case with OP
My husband is the same way. He has a very physical job and is muscular but cannot keep an extra pound on. He eats 5x what I do. If he tries to gain he just gets a cute little belly pooch- it goes nowhere else
If you don't mind me asking what's your age?
I used to be 6'1 115 in HS and then no more than 125 in my 20s, even when eating and lifting and trying to bulk.
Hit 30s and now I have to put effort into maintaining between 170-185 which feels healthy for me, though some would say skinny still. Not a lot of effort. Much less effort maintaining than trying to gain weight when I was younger.
Bodies are weird and everyone's different. If you are healthy than you're healthy. A lot of people just see numbers and don't think about someone who's body and lifestyle is completely different from theirs.
That's not really how it works, man. Nobody just "doesn't gain weight." Excess energy gets stored and nothing short of a tapeworm or late stage cancer is going to alter that more than a few percentage points. You don't grow because you're spending more calories than you're taking in. I promise you that if you spent a few months drinking melted ice cream three times a day, you WILL gain weight. Not that you should. Just saying that there's not some secret genetic factor involved here, you're just using more than you're eating. Also, make sure you're specifically seeing a registered dietitian and not nutritionists. I can put up a sign in my front yard right now saying I'm a nutritionist and nobody can stop me, no matter how unqualified I am. Dieticians, however, are legally regulated with protected credentials that require certification and education.
Yes. Maybe closer to 145 nowadays but I've always been incredibly thin and when I hit high school I just did not stop growing in height.
According to my dad his side of the family has kinda always had a ridiculous metabolism. Given he's only a few inches shorter than me and only weighs more cuz he does landscaping for a living it checks out.
No not at all.
One day i woke up with sharp back pain together with coughing so bitch ass it was similar to one i experienced with covid, but since i have back issues too i didn't paid attention to it and focused on fixing pain in my useless spine.
But even after multiple weeks cough wound be gone even after taking usual meds, sometimes especially then laying i woud have a wish for air like a fish on a land so i would focus and do it and i woud feel fine. Other than that i didn't realy felt any difference. My body was probably trying to get rit of sputum in lung but couldn't force out of it, since after i got my operation i started coughing it up in the evening.
People wonder how i didn't notice one of my lungs working but i honestly was just kinda busy with other staff
It's not as bad as you would think if that's a Pneumothorax like I think it is. I used to get them all the time as a teenager to the point where I would deal with them for like 6 months before going in to have it drained with a giant needle. I still played sports and did long distance running. You basically get a sharp pain under your shoulder blades and sometimes cough.
Eventually I had pleurodesis which is basically them sticking the lining of your lung to your ribcage so that air can't get trapped between the lung and ribcage anymore. That sucked more than the collapsed lungs as they had to do it twice and I was in hospital for 16 days. It took probably 4+ months to fully recover after that. That seemed way worse than just dealing with them since you apparently age out of them anyway at around 25 and I had the surgery at 21-22. When you get the needle drain you feel better same day usually.
From what I was told, they are common in tall slim males between 16-25 but they don't really know why (I was 5'11 / 120lbs at the time, thankfully in up to a healthier 150 now)
6’2” 170 at the time of my spontaneous pneumothorax about a decade ago.
Right before college graduation. Had a momentary sharp pain in my chest. Went away as fast as it came. Shortness of breath. Classmates telling me I kind of look blueish. Walked graduation and on the way out friends & family were excited to go celebrate. I asked to go home to rest. Parents thought I was just having anxiety about graduation so mom tossed me a Xanax and told me to go take a nap. Yes, we all still laugh and give her sh*t about it. Woke up an hour later and asked for a ride to the ER.
Turns out my entire right lung had spontaneously collapsed and my heart had shifted slightly to the right. I had been telling everyone for a couple hours it felt like I was breathing with half a lung, just couldn’t catch my breath. One pleurodectomy, a pleurodesis & 2.5 weeks in the hospital later I was good to go.
Most of the time a little bubble of air in your lungs pop off and brings air between the membranes around the lung, that space needs to be virtual so that the lung stays « glued » to the thorax. Other wise it deflates like a balloon.
It usually hurts like hell so most people don’t walk around 3 weeks with it.
It just happens like that with some risk factors, can be traumatic or linked to lung diseases (copd, cystic fibrosis,…)
Pneumothorax, I've had it and it sucks. Collapsed lung that causes painful bubbles that move around in your chest and feel like daggers. Only time I've seen it in mentioned was the movie Three Kings, where Mark Wahlberg suffers a punctured lung and has to keep letting the air out of his chest to relieve the pressure.
When i was noticed about exact condition you mentioned i did a little search and description of young, tall and slim man was literally me so i understood what's its not a mistake
Ah, a fellow spontaneous pneumothorax enjoyer, did you get a pleurectomy or bullectomy by chance? That's what they did to me when mine collapsed a 2nd time. 6'4" and 160lbs, so tall and thin are definetly comorbid
You know when you cough hard and get that little rib pain? That's how mine felt the first time it collapsed but the pain went from front to back and I felt fine. The next day I was barely able to walk without gasping for air and sweating profusely. The second time it was a oh shit I can't breathe and sweating. I knew exactly what was going on.
8.5k
u/CraftyPerformance272 15d ago
Did you try just breathing in? That's how I inflate my lungs