Cody 1

Thomas Cody

Ms. Jizi

UWRITE 1103-006

18 February 2018

Forty Days Dark

In the eighteen short years that I have been alive my journey has been filled with many

ups and downs, but it is how you overcome the challenges that come your way that determine

who you are as a person. One of the challenges that has played a large role in my life was the

second time my lungs collapsed in 2016. This forty-day journey has shaped me as an individual

and developed me into the person that I am today.

On May 16, 2016 I began to feel a sharp pain and it began to feel like a giant was

standing on my chest. I finished the remaining two hours of the school day and proceeded to go

to the Emergency Room with my Dad shortly after. After a short wait I was moved into the back

to get the first round of many chest x-rays. The images came back showing that I had a bilateral

pneumothorax which meant that both of my lungs had fully collapsed. The doctor asked, “How

are you walking around right know?” and explained that with the severity of my condition I

should be practically unconscious. They immediately rushed me into surgery and placed one

chest tube into my right lung and one chest tube into my right lung. I woke up and to my

surprise I had two garden hose resembling tubes attaching me to continuous suction supplied

through the wall of room 4E26. I was monitored for forty-eight hours before the surgeons

decided that it was time to take further steps to heal the air leaks.
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The next morning, I was woken up around 6:00 am to get a dose of x-ray radiation and

once the images were cleared I was taken on this long bumpy journey. The transport nurse

came up and we embarked on a trip that seemed to never end. As I was rolled to the Operating

Room it felt like everyone that you passed in the hallway was looking at you like it was going to

be the last time that they would ever see you, so they made sure to stare and wonder what I

was going in for. The pre-op process was long and full of IV placements and administration of

drugs. As I began to fade out of consciousness everyone wished me luck and they wheeled me

into the cold sanitary environment. Placed awkwardly on a metal table the surgeons began the

necessary torture to allow me to breathe again. After about thirty-six hours I regained

consciousness and was alerted with the news that the surgeons were not able to find the air

leak in my right lung and had to switch from an orthoscopic surgery to a thoracotomy where

they simply cut open my side and filled my lung cavity with water to search for air leaks, like

tactics used to find air leaks in bike tires. This process put my body through too much for that

day, so they just kept me unconscious over night and went in to cut off the top section of the

left lung and place a row of titanium staples across the apex of the lung the following day. As I

woke up in the ICU my breathing tube was removed, and I was told that the day was Friday and

that the surgery did not go exactly as planned. This was shocking because I went into the

supposedly four-hour procedure on Wednesday morning. They informed me that my left lung

procedure went textbook and should be healing however they still did not find the location of

the air leak in my right lung. This left everyone dazed, confused and unsure of the next course

of action.
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The equipment utilized to indicate whether or not I still had an air leak was a chest tube

attached to wall suction that is fed through this water box and if there were bubbles in the box

than air was still leaking out. After the failed thoracotomy the doctors kept coming in everyday,

checking to see if I had bubbles and would shake their heads and say, “I guess we’ll just have to

wait another day.” This process was demoralizing because at that point I was about twenty

days into my visit and being caged up that long isn’t good for anybody. To wake up every

morning hopeful only to be told that the only thing that you want in that moment is just out of

reach. It was just a waiting game at this point.

Another few days passed, and the doctors decided that my chronic leak was not going to

heal itself like it does in most patients, so they flew out a bronchial valve to be placed the

following morning. This one-way valve would be placed in the leaking bronchi and prevent air

from entering that lobe of the lung. This will allow the air flow to stop and give the lung wall a

chance to seal and heal. I was wheeled down the eternal hallway for another time and it is

obvious that you have been to the Operating room too many times when people start to

recognize you. I was unconscious for about three hours before I woke up and was told that the

valve could not be placed because they couldn’t determine which bronchi was attached to the

leaking lobe. At this point I had accepted the reality that I would never heal, and I needed a

miracle if I ever wanted to get out of the hospital.

After recovering for two days the doctors proposed an idea that they had never tried for

patients with a spontaneous pneumothorax, a blood patch. This was typically used to stop

bleeding in different organs such as the heart and was not typically used on lungs. The idea was

a last hope opportunity because I was so far outside the normalities of this condition. The
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average hospital stay is six days, the average procedures needed is two and the doctors are

very rarely not able to find the location of the leaking air. It was a long shot, but I agreed to the

Blood Patch procedure and hoped for the best. The next morning, I was rolled down to a room

in the ICU and shortly after my surgeon and a team of nurses came into the room and began

going through the procedure. Without administering any pain medicine, the surgeon stitched

tightly around the chest tube in my side checking to see if the hole in my side was simply not

sealed, however that was not the case, so he began the blood patch. My surgeon called for a

big bore needle and the nurse turned the corner with a syringe the size of a coffee stirrer. After

trying to find a vein in my bicep four times because all my other veins had already been used

the finally hit the vein and extracted two large containers of blood from my body. They then

tilted my bed so that I was laying upside down at a forty-five-degree angle with my head facing

the ground and reinserted all my blood back into my lung cavity hoping that the blood would

coagulate and clot over the leakage site. I stayed in this position for about four hours and it was

the most emotionally draining four hours of my life because if this didn’t work there was no

plan F.

The miracle had occurred. I woke up the next morning with no bubbles and the

surgeons monitored me for another day before finally releasing me back into the real world. My

chest tubes were pulled, one of my nurses sang to me and I was sent out in a parade of bubbles

down the hallway because I had been a patient for so long. After forty grueling days in that

place I was finally able to feel freedom again and walk around without being tethered to

suction. This procedure was truly a miracle for me because since my procedure the doctors

have tried the blood patch on lungs six times and it only worked on one of the other patients. I
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have learned many things about patience throughout this experience that I have implemented

into my everyday life as I continue to grow and encourage others who may be going through

other major problems in life.

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Peer Feedback - UWRT 1103- Jizi-Spring 2018

Date: 2/19/18

Reader’s Name: Sean Brown

Writer’s Name: Thomas Cody

Three Step Response

1. Velcro Words/Phrases
 Lungs Collapsed
 “Eighteen Short Years”
 “Like a giant was standing on my chest”
 “A dose of x-ray radiation”
 “Necessary torture”
 Demoralizing
 “Eternal hallway”
 “Forty grueling days”

2. Feelings

 Shocked
 Sad
 Sorry
 Hopeful
 Amazed
 Relieved
 Touched
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3. Questions

 Did he contact his parents right away after feeling the chest pains? If not, why?
 Did he ever feel like those would be his last moments?
 Even though the last surgery was a success, have any other problems with his lungs occurred
after?
 How did he stay so patient?
 How did his parents / family feel?

Criterion-Based Response

Highlight examples of each of the four elements of the personal essay using the following colors:

Personal presence of the author

An engagement between self and the world

The Author’s Exploration and Self-Discovery

The Need to Both Show and Tell

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