Hospital Visit, 2005, by Brandon

From MemoryArchive

Who: Brandon 
What: Surgery
When: 2005
Where: Taylor Hospital

A memory I am never going to forget is being in the hospital for 3 months from April 6 to June 12. It all started one night at my house. My friend Will had just gone home and I fell asleep on my recliner doing homework. I woke up 2 hours later at 7 pm and I was having a hard time breathing, so my mom and me went to Taylor hospital.

At first we thought it was asthma, but the doctor said different. Apparently my right lung had collapsed, they didn’t know the reason but they were going to look into it. I went into surgery right away and had a tube inserted into my right lung through my side. Eventually they took that out because the hole in my side was getting infected, so they put in another one on my right side. But because they were just fixing my right lung it pushed all my organs to the left, and collapsed my left lung. By now I had been in the hospital for 4 weeks, anyway they had to put a tube in my left lung to try and fix that one. Since I had a tube in each side and I had a low blood oxygen level I was put into ICU for a week.

After returning to a regular hospital room for another week the doctor came and took the tubes out of my right side. I could finally lay on that side which made me happy. At the end of the week they took the ones out of the left side and now could lie on my side if I wanted to, but I still was stuck in the hospital for one more week.

After being sent home, it was May 16, I thought I was fine but the doctor said to stay home for one more week before returning to school. I had to stay home and sleep downstairs and wasn’t allowed to overexert myself. Then I finally was allowed back into school and I was fine all week. Then came Friday I thought I was in the clear but my left lung started to hurt and my dad had to take me out of school and to the hospital. I got there and I immediately got an x-ray and it showed that my left lung collapsed again, and I was admitted again, it was June 2. Thankfully it was only my left one and it wasn’t as bad as the first time. The doctor said it would only be 10 days and I would be out. When I got out it was June 12 and there was still 4 more days of school but I was told not to go. I was told I had to repeat my English and European influence 9th grade class.

Over the summer I went to a check up and they took an x-ray, a MRI of my heart and found out I had a relaxed heart muscle, and it was the cause of my lungs collapsing. He also said it could happen again in two years, this scares me every day and is the thing that keeps me away from hospital.