A Medical anomoly, that's what I am...isn't that another word for a freak?
You know that song sung with such marvelous humor long ago by Harry Belafonte that starts off with, "THERE'S A HOLE IN THE BUCKET, DEAR LIZA, DEAR LIZA,"?
Well, in my case, the song should go, "THERE'S A WHOLE IN MY LEFT LUNG, DEAR DOCTOR, DEAR DOCTOR."
It's a funny little hole, with a character all its own and quirks that make me one of only SIX people in the entire world who have this kind of hole.
Let me tell you how I came to learn about my advance case of FREAKHOOD!
Several years ago, I was minding my own business, hoping for a quiet death from a really bad case of the flu that my daughter had brought home from her germ laden teacher. A MONTH my daughter fought this nasty bug bemoaning, with all the Acadmey Award winning angst of Theda Barra playing Cleopatra during the very early Movie era, about her desire to pull a shroud over her head and gasp her final, lung choking final gasp.
Being a parent long used to adolescent overplay when it comes to stretching out excuses to stay home from school, I often looked at her laments with eye brow lifted in doubt...until the bug decided to migrate.
Coming from a long line of hacking coughers...not from smoking, but from bronchial and asthmatic conditions, I had thought, with delilghted superiority, to have escaped the family curse...I was, after all, nearly through my forites. But was I ever wrong!
After a month of coughs that developed into pneumonia then downgraded to just a violent, but continuous hack, I began the quest through the murky maze of Pulmonary Mucktitude. (No, I know that's NOT a word...but it fits nonetheless.)
Some doctors did nothing more than write a script for prednisone...a steroid...for asthma...a steroid...let me repeat that. I was a size four when I began my foray into Pulmonary Mucktitude. Six months on Predinisone for an asthmatic cough, which by the way, I did NOT have, did change my entire outlook on life...sorta. See, I can no longer see my toes, because I gained 60 pounds...(a typical side effect to prednisone, I now know, and I began exhibiting bruises for no reason at all...long term prednisone use.)
Six months without rellief...nor change...well, not quite true...the cough had changed. I was now coughing hard enough to crack ribs. Ever had to cough when you already have coughed hard enough to crack a couple of ribs? My daughter's earlier laments for death were sounding more and more reasonable...and I was over the flu!
Dr. Pulmonary Muckraker #1 finally gave up and winged me on to number 2. What do you think number 2 does? Begins the process all over again! Prednisone again...but only for 3 months this time...so only 20 pounds more, and a herniated belly button joining in for the fun. (A herniated belly button that no one would tell me about for five more years...and then only when it became a SERIOUS intestinal crisis...How was I to know that wasn't just an outtie from all the new weight? I'd never weighed more than 130 pounds before except when I was pregnant!)
Let's do an MRI, Dr. 2 finally suggests as the three month mark wings to a close without the Prednisone showing any signs of curbing let alone stopping the rib cracking coughs.
Uh oh...dark spots...bronchoscopy...must do. Serious. Could be cancer. Can't put it off. Cancer? Scary, right? Sure, and yet, in a strange way, it was a relief. Finally maybe we would have an answer and know how to treat the cough. Yeah right!!!!
Bronchoscopy...the colonoscopy of the nose, throat, and lungs at the same time. Bronchoscopy...where they send this long tube with a lighted camera on the end and pinchers, to snip and clip here and there, and just for extra fun, a water hose for the added thrill of finding out what it's like to drown from the inside out. (You have signed a medical release form to let them into the area that allows you to suck in the air you breathe to live so they can perform these death defying feats...and it's on film. =^..^= For THEIR future laurels.)
How?
We come to the hole.
Within the left upper chamber of my lung is a hole. The hole does not go all the way through the lung...if it did, my lung would deflate like a limp balloon, but because it doesn't it is a medical anomaly.
Now I am in the modified OR room, with this thing up my nose, down my throat, into my lung and prodding my inner lung when the room that has my doctor, the anesthetist...(we're talking what they euphemistically call "twilight sleep" anesthesia here)...a nurse, a Pulmonary tech, and the video guy, goes quiet. My doctor, zips over to the wall phone, taps in three numbers, tells whoever is on the receiving end to get up here...and five minutes later it is SRO (Standing Room Only) as a phalanx of staff crowd around the TV and my entrapped body.
Outcome?
I have never been able to get rid of the Prednisone weight gain. That stuff changes your body's chemistry enough that there's no going back to pre-prednisone status. I still have the cough...at one point they treated it with Nexium...acid reflux after another equally invasive, equally disgusting, equally failed test, equally erroneous diagnosis...at another they sent me off for Speech Therapy...the Speech Therapist had some really interesting words for the doctor that made THAT diagnosis...Post Nasal Drip was another...no antihistamine known to mankind, and believe me they have put me on them all, has worked...but they...my glorious doctors, wrote a stellar paper for the AMA. They routinely meet with the doctors who "treat" the other five "hole-in-the-lungers" around the world...they seek out funding from wealthy benefactors and discuss new methods/tests/treatments.
For me, I cough, I suck on Halls Fruit Breezers, about the only things that give me ANY relief, and steer clear of any further dealing with Pulmonary Muckrakers. The dark floaters? Probably scar tissue floating around from the pneumonias I have had over the years? Should they be monitored? The Muckrakers say they should...but I'm not really sure I want to entrust myself to them again...would you?
I'll never be a size 4 again, but I'd really rather not try for a size 35 thank you very much!
=^..^=
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