Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot...

One would think that after the year I had, every acquaintance in a white coat, auld or not, would be forgot as quickly as possible, right? The problem is that in my case, doctors are like women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. So guess where I spent my New Year's Eve? Yup. In the ER. Okay, don't get all bent out of shape, I'm fine. Let me explain. I had spontaneous pneumothoraces of my left lung three times in my 30's and 40's. A spontaneous pneumothorax is a collapsed lung that comes out of nowhere with no apparent cause. There's no trauma or illness involved; one day you're walking down the street, you feel a sharp pain, and your lung is suddenly hanging limply in your chest like a balloon from last week's birthday party. My first one occurred while I was away at a weekend Bar Mitzvah. It happened Friday night and I didn't get it looked at until I got home Saturday night. After that initial pain, there was a dull ache in my chest and a strange sense of a presence in my chest. It's hard to describe; normally you're aware your organs are inside your body, but you don't actually feel them in there. Well, I felt my lung. This was my left lung, and it collapsed twice more after that, in a span of about ten years. They were never quite sure what caused it, but they suspected I had a congenital weak spot on the lung. After the third episode, I had a procedure done called pleurodesis, whereby the lung is made to adhere to the wall of the chest cavity. This is supposed to prevent the pneumothorax from recurring, and it has worked like a charm for me; I've never had the problem again. Well, last week I started having sharp pain in my chest anytime I took a deep breath, only this time it was on my right side. I remembered well what my collapsed lungs felt like way back when, and this new pain was almost identical. I was convinced that I had a brand new pneumothorax in a brand new location. Short of surgery, the treatment for a pneumothorax entails the insertion of a chest tube which sucks out the air in the chest cavity so the lung can re-inflate and heal on its own. This, of course, requires hospitalization. But I needed someone to confirm my self-diagnosis. I tried to reach a few different doctors, but everyone was either on vacation or had already left his office. So I called Hatzolah and asked them just to send one or two guys just to check for breath sounds on my right side. No ambulance and no sirens, please; Babby and I were at Chayie's for Shabbos and I didn't want to worry her if it wasn't necessary. Two EMTs were there almost before I hung up the phone. Their diagnosis was inconclusive, so they wanted to take me to the hospital to have it checked out. Many of the streets in Brooklyn still hadn't been plowed, so driving was still quite treacherous and some streets were still unpassable. So they took me to the nearest medical facility. And I use that term rather loosely. To be continued...