The Lung Road to Recovery

An update on my lung collapse/hospital situation which you can read more about on my last post~

TL;DR version: They found more blisters in my lungs so I had a minor surgical procedure done on Monday to prevent them from inevitably popping later—it's been a painful recovery process, but now I've been discharged and will be finishing recovering at home!

The "nobody asked for it to be this long" version:

A quick warning that compared to my last post, I'll be documenting a lot more detail and negative experiences in this one so no need to read if you're not comfortable!!! It's all in the past so no worries. ^^

To put things in perspective after I hadn't expected to stay at the hospital for long/expected to still go on the business trip, I had the procedure done after 5 days of being in the hospital and my discharge yesterday marked 8 days of cyborg hospital life. My surgeon said that my air leak from before had recovered but after my CT scan revealed a bunch of additional big blisters, he highly recommended going through with the procedure especially because I travel frequently and would inevitably end up back in a hospital. Things move fast here because they squeezed me into the surgery schedule a mere 5 hours after the surgeon sprung up that talk with me LOL. It was like, "Good morning Eva wipe that gunk out of your eyes SURPRISE! That surgery I was saying you might need in the future probably needs to be done now, maybe today? Yeah, don't eat or drink anything."

Perhaps I was underestimating what any of this meant—certainly underestimated the "discomfort" people told me I'd have while recovering—but I wasn't worried about the procedure at all, bless! In fact my thoughts were more like, "What do you mean I can't drink water I'm gonna shrivel up into a pixieva??" "I can't wait to finally get some good uninterrupted sleep when they put me out." lolololo

Apparently the surgery went well! The surgeon says he removed my lung blisters and they did something called pleurodesis to stick my lungs to the chest wall to stop it from collapsing again. Luckily, I can't remember anything about this procedure, yay!

My first memory as I came to was being irritated right off the bat. I remember thinking, "Holy fuck, this might be the most physical pain I've ever been in... Why are these people moving me handling my body like a sloppy hunk of ground beef? Ow ow ow ow ow."
This was the recovery room as they waited for my ICU room to be ready, and I was fortunate enough to be near a lady who would not stop yelling for at least half an hour—just making noises and calling for help without inhibition—to the point where she became a wolf-crier and the nurses couldn't do anything else for her. I did not like her, but I took her as inspiration to keep still and try to ignore the most excruciating pain I'd ever been in. (Which backfired as it turned out my nurse didn't give me painkillers because she thought I wasn't in pain what the fuck.) One nurse in particular was really cute and exercised some insane patience with that lady, so I was happy when she was the one called over to help push my gurney because I managed to blurt out, "You are the most patient person ever; I was so impressed," and gave her a big laugh. QuQ After which she introduced me to my ICU nurses by calling me a "good patient" BAHAHAHA.. As one of the rare young patients, I made it my personal mission to try to bring a little joy to everyone I interacted with regardless of brevity, amidst all the awful things and crabby people their days are full of. ^^

Although it sucked to be in condition that required being in the ICU, I also kind of preferred that experience? I loved aaallll of my nurses—all sweet, funny, easy to talk to, like we were cracking jokes back and forth hours after my surgery—and I appreciated that they actually spent a ton of time with me and helped me with absolutely anything, made me feel very taken care of and I felt like I knew everything that was going on because they would tell me what's normal, what's abnormal, and they let me take my time. The care in a regular room isn't nearly to this level but I won't go into that, other than say that I'm disappointedly surprised they moved me out of ICU after a day. ;o; It was a difficult transition since I had just come out of having the functionality of a 1 year old.

That night, I kind of hit a low point... My parents came into the ICU, tried to feed me dinner, and stressed me out to tears. And the food was bland and dry so I just kept feeling worse and worse and I didn't have the emotional strength to pull myself out. I entered this fucked up cycle where the crying and irregular breathing caused horrible pain in my chest, which just made me sob harder. I must have been at it for at least 10 minutes and every time I even so much as thought about trying to communicate why I was crying, I just cried more so I couldn't and no one could do anything... But since then I became vocal about the things they do that stress me out, so it's gotten better for sure. Everything else and all my other visitors have been great too! I've really tried to be free of stress or worry as much as I could.

Sadly I had to learn the hard way that my body reacts badly to many painkillers so it was not exactly a pleasant recovery process. ^^;; Anyway!!!! The CRAZIESTT thing happened 2 days after the procedure alsjdlksdfjlfsd. I was napping and being too tiredlazy to eat dinner when Thanos my surgeon suddenly struts in and booms, "How you doing, little one? What do you say we take out that tube out of your chest and get you home tomorrow?" and I was like lul i mean why not BECAUSE I WAS NOT SURE IF HE WAS JOKING OR NOT. So he comes back in 5 minutes with a nurse and some stuff in tow and it's really fucking happening omg... No extra painkillers, no numbing, barely any warning, nothing... I lied on my side on my bed and they just PULLedd ITT OUUUUuuuUUuuUuUTTTtT. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH. MY CHEST TUBE. THAT GOES INTO. MY LUNG!!!!

It was like 200% pain which quickly faded away into 30% pain so that latter part was cool I guess. Continuing with the punches, he immediately he made me take a walk with him around the hospital, which surprisingly didn't feel bad! He did more explaining (more for my worried dad than for me) about how these lung blisters aren't really preventable, and it was just the way my body is built and chance, that the best exercise is whatever I want to do as long as it isn't overly rigorous, that I should forget about all of this and go live my life, and I thought it was poignant when he said, "You're going to be normal—you are normal."

So la-di-da, I spent another day recovering and dealt with some other challenges I'm going to gloss over, and then they decided I was good to be discharged! 8D I'm still very physically weak, I have to catch my breath even after an action like sitting down, and I can only speak a few words until I run out of breath, but at least with the power of ibuprofen I'm pain free if I leave my wounds alone and I'll be resting at home for a few days. Honestly it's a bit of a bother that the air in my room is crap, my bed doesn't sit up, and my mom is no replacement for a nurse, but at least no more hospital bills or being woken at 5 AM. It was definitely weird being back in the outside world. Who knows when I will try to assimilate into human society again.. Do I even really want to? Hmm...

Takeaways from this whole experience!!

• Look, I was able to spend 8 days doing absolutely nothing, free of workaholic tendencies!!! I had zero anxiety and did my best so that barely any of the stress I felt stemmed from myself. I would love to keep it that way. I worry and dread things a lot, so I wish to just keep swimming peacefully and punch out the sharks as they come.
   
• Okay I've personally never thought of myself as old, but I never want anyone to call me old for being 25 again. :c Life is long and there's plenty of time to be old later. Literally everyone kept being like, "What's someone as young and healthy as you doing in a hospital?" and honestly even if I were twice my age—even 3 times my age—I think there's still plenty of life to live.
   
• That first night when I had a procedure done in the emergency room, I was still self conscious about the way I looked, even though I was surrounded by medical professionals. It was so, so, so liberating when I finally stopped giving a shit about my appearance or being shy about stuff and there was absolutely no judgment about anything. Gotta start letting go.
   
• I was forced to grow out of my squeamishness and extreme fear of pain, which is good. xD Pain is never forever. I can take it.
   
• People in my life are awesome! My workplace has been super understanding and sweet and did everything they could to take 100% of pressure off of me, and also they check in on how I'm feeling so I'm truly lucky to be where I am. ;v; Friends from everywhere sent a surprisingly huuuge amount of supportive messages, thank you thank you aaa bless them all and may their lungs stay intact ♥♥♥
  Even Fome's band Phoenix Ash (WHO JUST RELEASED THE MV FOR THEIR SINGLE BTW!! it might be my new fave song by them) gave me a card and it's in mint condition, signed by all members so make sure to hit me up with that $$$ winkwink hahahahaha. Shoutout to the fam Mimi and Benton for visiting basically as soon as I was hospitalized omg T__T  I legit never once expected anyone to visit—plus it was hard with all the unpredictable conditions and ever-changing roommate situation—so please don't feel bad if you're local and didn't visit!!!!
  And finally with my stomach as the ultimate judge, the MVPs of all this have to be Fome and Chiisana who surprised me one day with medium rare prime rib. I  o w e  t h e m  m y  l u n g s.