Life without lungs - Kinda ;)

Hello,

My initial plans for steemit was to blog letters to my son (three years old) but after some thought I decided that was a little too personal to share so I am "pivoting?" is that right? Anyway.

What I plan to do instead is blog about my life without lungs (normal, healthy, pink spongey lungs), life on the transplant list, and life post transplant so....

Hello again, my name is Jason Power, I'm 34 years old and my lungs are buggered.

I suffer with lupus and pulmonary lung fibrosis the origins of which are unknown and started when I was 17. Myself and a friend decided to go to Amsterdam to indulge in the cliché of being a 17 year old boy, away from parents and in a city where drugs and alcohol were readily available. Fantastic!

It was not to be...

We arrived early in the morning so we hit the sack and went to bed. The next morning I felt awful and spent the day in the hostel. The next day even worse. By day 3 I was coughing up blood and vomiting. Day 4? The ambulance was called and I was removed from the 3rd floor of the hostel quite dramatically by the fire service out of the window. My only time in Amsterdam remotely close to being "high".

Turns out I had an unusual type of pneumonia in both lungs and septicaemia. Happy days! I was sedated and woke 9 days later. While sedated my condition continued to deteriorate. Both of my lungs collapsed and required constant draining and the septicaemia wouldn't shift. I was put on life support and eventually given a 0 percent chance of survival. My parents were told to start "making arrangements". My school was informed and my friends were told the bad news. So it came as quite a surprise to everyone when I recovered, woke up, and flew back home. Forever the party pooper. My consultant would later call me a walking miracle :)

Since that day my lungs (unsurprisingly) have never been that great but they managed. That was up until last October when a trip to the hospital lasted 3 weeks and I was told that I needed oxygen 24/7. I knew they were getting bad. The five years previous had been an almighty struggle. I was expecting it. When the cannula went on though and I was told it's not to come off again it was a punch in the gut. My internal illness had now manifested itself externally.

I look like this: