Hi, so wow what a 2 weeks I've had! Out of the blue while i was sitting down and turned to my left on our chair in the back room i suddenly felt a tightness all up and down my left side, initially i panicked because anything in that area you automatically think chest/heart but after the paramedics arrived and did a couple of ECG's on me they said there was nothing wrong with my heart. I was taken anyway to the A&E (ER for the Americans) and spent 5 hours waiting to get seen and within that time it went from being uncomfortable to really really painful and struggling to breath! In that time to i got my blood done (came back fine) and everything else you can think of. The doctor FINALLY examined me and said it was possibly a muscle issue since my breathing sounded normal apparently! They then did a chest x-ray where she discovered a pretty big collapsed lung on my left side. So within 15 mins i had a chest tube inserted (while awake, VERY painful) and spent the next week in hospital with it in. There was a slight improvement but not enough they said and the lung had not fully inflated and the air was still in there at some points. So they sent me to a specialist heart and lung hospital where one of the specialists there said to me that surgery was the next step since the lung wasn't coming fully up and there was still some air in there. Apparently i had either came close to suffering or did (while waiting that long in A&E) a tension pneumothorax which are dangerous before i had the tube put in which wasn't nice to hear. So they suggested a LEFT VATS PLEURECTOMY and BLEBECTOMY and explained what would be done to ensure this doesn't ever happen again to this lung. So i had the surgery a week ago now and i'm back home recovering. The initial couple of days were very painful and as have been this whole week to be honest but it's getting better each day with little improvements. I think the main thing for me now is i get unnecessarily worried/paranoid that it would happen again and to the right side to even though they explained to me that the chances of it happening on the right side around 1-2%. Then there comes other worries such as flying as i was meant to be going on holiday next August to Florida again and the plane and going on theme park rides becomes a worry then to. I'd like to get back into fitness as well and weight training which i use to do for around 8 years and gotten pretty big, around 16 stone of mostly muscle until i lost it all and went really thin when i decided to have a break from it. That was the main thing all the doctors said was the cause as well, tall, thin young men it is most common in! Looks like NoFap is the least of my problems at the moment, i still haven't watched any though but have masturbated a few times over pictures other girls have sent and dirty text talk but i think after all that has happened to me i'm not to fussed at the moment. Still no porn though and it'll stay that way. Another nagging thing that was on my mind was that i had a couple V..... a few days prior to when it happened, i'm almost certain that was not the cause as there have been no correlation ever between the two (i honestly couldn't find a thing even on google) and the cause is generally attributed to changes in air pressure from numerous different things you just don't know.
