8 months post VATS...looking back on the past few months of recovery

So...I have been absent for a while now, but I have had a bit of a down day today and for some reason it's the down days that seem to make you want to find comfort in writing words on a keyboard...so here I am. I find it quite sad that that is the case though and so I will make sure to fill the post with some positivity, because it really hasn't been all bad!

I am now going to try and break down key events from the past 7 months that in some way relate to my lungs and therefore might have some value to you guys reading. If I waffle a little, I apologise, but it is something I tend to do well in person as well.

June 2015: 6 weeks post op - Surprise weekend away!!!

My wonderful boyfriend took me away for my birthday in June, and although it was something to look forward to I was also a little nervous, I was still in recovery and so not everything was coming easy to me, especially physical exercise, so I was hoping he knew a lot of walking was out of the question. 

We discovered on the way thee my complete lack of sense of direction, or geography. I had no idea where we were going until I saw a sign for Exeter....which is a long long way from Hull! The car journey was OK though, I was a little worried about being in a car for so long as at this point I was still anxious about getting pulmonary embolisms and also sitting for that long isn't exactly great when your side aches, but as I said, it was fine :)

So we arrived in Exeter, a little non-plussed as to the decision behind Exeter, but it was a lovely City and we had a great day wandering around. But.....there were also a lot of stairs around Exeter! Stairs and hills....so the girl with the recovering internal breathing apparatus was frequently feeling quite unfit! I was very proud to say though that despite everything, and feeling like I might faint when I got to the top, I managed to climb a hell of a lot of steps, so many I would have struggled even before all of this. I considered this a nice achievement to add to the small list of post-op achievements!

The next day, on my birthday, the destination choice became clearer...we headed to Woolacombe for the day where we had enjoyed a great camping trip the previous year. We played frisbee on the bech and I surprised myself in being able to do quite a bit of running around...(another achievement!) It was just so nice to realise that I could actually have some fun running about and nothing scary was happening to my chest! (although I wouldn't recommend over reaching for the frisbee....no matter how competitive you are!) 

Then came the best surprise of them all...after a wonderful curry on the beach and a lovely walk as the sun set over the sea, my wonderful partner, who has helped me through so much, told me he wanted to marry me. There were lots of tears....of happiness of course, and I felt like the luckiest person in the world, despite everything. I have said it in previous posts, but I will say it again, I'm not sure I would have coped anywhere near as well without him by my side to calm my nerves, make me laugh when I felt miserable and motivate and support me to recover as quickly as possible. So despite the recovery and the off days and the niggles of pain, there was an amazing man who wanted to share in it all with me forever....one cannot complain too much!

July 2015: 9 weeks post op: Camping holiday!

So camping would not have been at the top of my list of things to do post lung surgery. With an aching back that was still slightly uncomfortable to sleep on due to the strange pulling sensation on my lung, the thought of sleeping on a floor did not fill me with joy, but....we had spent a lot on a new tent and I convinced my fiance to buy a foam self-inflating mattress to help. 

So... just 9 weeks post-op and off we went to the Yorkshire Dales. Not too far from home, just in case! The bed was comfy....no problems at all...and the holiday was great. We went on plenty of walks and being outdoors made me feel like a new person. I have always loved camping, it makes me feel so refreshed, despite the early mornings and the fact that you probably do more than when your at home. We went clambering up rocks and in caves and on long walks up fairly steep hills. IT WAS GREAT!!  And I felt great!!! I might not be 100% and anxiety was still a bit of an issue...but it was another positive step....and one I was taking far sooner than I had anticipated. 

Monkey style a How Stean Gorge!

Jumping for joy!

Made it!

Climbing up the Falls....hard work but worth it!

September 2015: 3-4 months post-op.

Time to finish my teaching degree! So with everything that happened I had to put my PGCE year on hold from February until September. Thankfully I have been able to finish it where I left off and so the past four months have been crazy busy getting it finished! I was nervous before starting...it is a physically and mentally draining course when you are feeling great, so I was a bit apprehensive about it in all honesty.
Not only that but my fiance had to move nearer to London for a new job, which meant we would only see each other on weekends, every other week. Thankfully I was able to stay at home with my parents and sister, so I had support for the days where it all seemed a bit much. And those days certainly happened!! 

Being signed off as fit for work...and being fit for work.

Being signed off as physically fit and ready for work is by no means the same as being as being mentally fit for it. Don't get me wrong, I was capable, and I am glad I have done it when I did, but it was at times a real challenge to put on a smile and act like it as all OK. 

One thing I have learnt from this is to try not to feel guilty for feeling a bit weak or anxious or being in some discomfort. You are allowed to moan about it and allowed to feel it. I spent so many days feeling anxious, feeling like my chest was bubbling again, getting shooting pains and feeling breathless. Most of this was purely due to anxiety, which had probably got worse due to not really discussing it. It seemed like a vicious circle. When I talked about it I felt like I was being silly and feeling sorry for myself and making excuses, so I didn't want to talk about it, but when I didn't talk about it, those feelings became worse and I was neither use nor ornament. After many reassuring talks with friends and loved ones I realised I was the only one who thought I was being silly and so I tried to be more open about it. There were a few crying sessions, and days of exhaustion from the work as much as anything else, but I am almost done now...just a couple of essays to go! 

And now... 8 months later: 

The first post-op cough:
I have recently had to deal with my first cough since surgery. This might sound like a silly thing to write about, but it made me nervous. It had me worried as soon as other people started to get coughs, first my colleagues and then members of my family. I did my best to avoid it but low and behold, the sore throat arrived. I was relived at first as I thought I had escaped the cough, until one night on a trip to my fiancées grandparents I started to cough, a horrid chesty cough. It was one of those that keeps you up in the night and you feel like your chest will explode...great! I had a horrible fear that the coughing was going to tear the lung away from where it was glued and I would have to go through it all again. But...it didn't. I felt fine, I could still breathe and it was just a cough, like any other cough.

Return of the shooting pain and grinding feeling:

This then it what has actually made me return to my blog and write a couple of new pages. This past week I have been in a bit more pain than normal, my chest is aching and I have intermittent shooting pains in my right shoulder blade. Along with this I also have a grinding sensation in my chest on the right side that occurs almost constantly, unless I am fully stretched out. I had put it down to recovering from the cough, or muscle aches and pains (I had these a lot before all of this), but I could shake the anxiety I had about it all. And what is a common symptom of anxiety? Breathlessness! Yay! 
So I had pain and breathlessness...was it anxiety related, or was it lung related? That was the question in my mind most of the day. I went for some long walks to try and reassure myself, but the breathlessness seemed to still be there, despite managing OK I just had a feeling that I wasn't breathing right. I went online, to ask other people what they experienced, and they all said it was normal, people who had been in recovery longer telling me they still got phantom pains, and explaining the grinding sensations to me as a symptom of the tissues rubbing together now that my lung was glued. 
Don't get me wrong, it did help to hear other people say these things, and also tell you they worried about it too, but it didn't shake my anxiety, which persisted for another couple of days and was seriously hindering my motivation to complete my essays. Its not easy to focus when everytime you breathe it feels strange and makes you worry.

To A&E or not to A&E?

After having a bit of a cry a couple of days ago to the fiancee, we decided that it would be best to just go to A&E. 
I had thought about going before now, but I didn't want any reason to not finish my essay, or to have to postpone the wedding because low and behold I was broken again, or not be able to continue making travel plans because maybe I shouldn't be flying, or climbing mountains. It might sound extreme, but I have learnt that that is what anxiety does, it makes you think about the worst scenario and then it made me bury my head in the and for fear of them coming true. 
I ended up sharing all these feelings with my other half and we decided that all this was making me more ill than just knowing...and I wasn't getting my essays done, which were the highest priority.

So...I went to A&E the following day. First I went to the local small hospital to see if I could be seen quicker but was told they don't do chest x-rays. They also had great difficulty understanding my northern accent...apparently the word lung is not understood in the South unless pronounced 'Lang'. 
So...without a doctor down here to refer me (I have moved back down South only in the past few weeks) I headed to the larger hospital. 
I was pretty lucky to be honest, I told them of my complaint, was triaged very quickly and told a doctor would see me in an hour and half. Not too bad I thought, considering I have waiting 3 hours before. 
I got seen within 15 - 20 minutes though, and after a listen to my chest the doc sent me off to x-ray to be safe. He explained it was highly unlikely, and actually I was more likley to get aches and pains from infections than another collapse. He also decided to ask me 'why are you so tiny?' in his words. I was a little non-plussed at this and thought I had misheard him, but nope....that is what he asked, holding up his little finger to help reiterate the question. He put it more simply...'How much do you weigh? Are you a size 0 or a size 6?' I knew why he was asking....the slimmer you are the more risk of a spontaneous pneumothorax, but I was also a little annoyed at the way it was aksed. I responded that I was over 10 stone and a size 10 or 12.... "Ah...perfectly proportioned then!" came the response... again, I was not sure how I felt about that either. I put it down to perhaps a difference in culture, as aside from that he was really helpful and put me at ease. 
The x-ray took another 20 minutes and then it was back to waiting. Fingers crossed!!!!
After just over an hour and 10 minutes I was seen by the doctor again and told everything was fine. I saw the x-ray of my lungs, and it was the first time I had seen an x-ray of them looking healthy, which made a change! He compared them to prior x-rays and the difference was clear to see. In the past I always thought I could see what they were describing to me...but when it is side by side, you can really see it. or once the image looked black all over my chest, no air, just black :) I was ok!!!

I left feeling like a weight had been lifted and since then I am just putting my pain down to muscles like a regular person, and the feeling of breathlessness has gone away massively, mainly due to the fact that I am not spending all day taking unnaturally deep breaths I think. 

I am now really glad that I went, I feel much better knowing and it is helping me to build a picture of what is normal for me...what pains and sensations I should expect to feel without anxiety kicking in. I see a bit like a learned response in my sub-concious. For example a headache....we don't panic about them, because we have had them before and be fine, but if you had one for the first time as an adult, you would probably think you had something wrong with your brain and head to the doctors. I feel its a similar concept. I have to experience these pains and sensations and be ok with it, enough times that it becomes a normal subconscious response to just ignore them.

And so now I am sat here writing all of this down in the hopes it might help some of you out there to hear what someone else has to say. 

Thanks for reading