Yesterday was another somewhat eventful day on the lung front then...the drain which was inserted the day before was not a particularly nice one. I don’t want to scare anyone who has never had a chest drain before, rest assured I have had quite a few in and previous ones have always been fine (a tad uncomfortable or sore at times but fine) but this one was a little demon. They did warn me this might be the case as it was an anterior drain (in the front of the chest whereas they usually go in the side) and it took an immediate dislike to me doing, well anything which didn’t involve sitting bolt upright really. Consequently I got very little sleep, and it took a hefty whack of IV morphine to finally get on top of the pain.

I went to be X-rayed at midday, and as I sat down noticed the film, and asked the radiographer where the drain was. She started to look for it whilst I cracked some lame joke about having an invisible drain but then the porters whisked me away before we could locate it. When I got back upstairs, the doctors came in and requested to have a look at the sight. Sensing something was up I asked what was going on and they confessed it seems that the drain had come out and they weren’t quite sure why. I am fairly sure I know exactly why – it obviously wasn’t just me that hated said drain, my little lung also decided that this was clearly not on and forced it out of my chest. This has since been verified as the most likely (yet surprising) cause and amuses me greatly - teenylung is going for the iron man title by forcing tubing out of cavity then, my lungs seem to have such personality; that is what keeps me so fond of them!

So 24 hours after insertion, the drain was removed. As it was such a small drain, they merely stuck an airtight plaster over the site, and I had the most blissful 2 hours sleep ever (sleep always feels SO good when you haven’t been able to for so long). On awaking and sitting up to attempt some of the hospital cuisine, I glanced down and nearly fell off the bed when I discovered the plaster had formed large bubble (which had an uncanny resemblance to the millennium dome) signifying that the wound had decided to stay firmly open and leak air out in a stubborn manner. Whilst it was vaguely tempting to see how large this bubble could get (perhaps I could start running bets, size of my fist? My head? Etc) we decided to put a to stop the leakage asap. This wasn’t a huge problem, simply required some stitching, but does of course indicate the persistent airleak is still there. Next job is to sit and wait, hope that the lung does not just continue to slowly go down (as it has done so far) and if so roll up chest drain number 4.

Feeling a tiny bit down today, but I think that is just because it has been a rough few days nicely marked by it being exactly 1 calendar month today since I moved in here (went to A&E on the 19th, was transferred on the 20th). They are trying to give me a very restful day today (just blood cultures to be done to find out what is causing these temps which are still persisting) and so after a bit of sleep and reading trashy mags and stuff (yay!) I shall be back on wiggling form again.