The story of JC
It was winter of my freshman year of college when I began getting very sick. I would progressively go into states of barely being able to breath and shivering. I was diagnosed with pneumonia that sent me to the ER twice in a few days. Things all started to get wierd when the great Nurse Practicioner at my school’s health clinic noticed something was off. She was listening to my breathing noises and noticed that no air was really coming in or out of my lower right lobe of my lung. This was fairly alarming to her especially with my current state. My mom proceeded to drive 6 hours to help take care of me in this state of not knowing much. We stayed away from my dorm and in a hotel for a little bit, thinking it may be mold of some type flaring it up. The NP told me I needed to see a pulmonologist in which I got a meeting with ASAP. I had to go back home and missed about 2 weeks of school however.
The second time I was in the Emergency Room, my symptoms of shortness of breath, coughing up blood, tachycardia, and pneumonia like symptoms really left the doctors stumped. It was not until they told me I needed a CT scan to rule out a pulmonary embolism that we knew what was going on. I was officially diagnosed with an intralobar pulmonary sequestration. This is a very rare disease in which I have a mass of useless lung tissue taking of a lobe of my lung and draining blood from my aorta. When the pulmonologist got a hold of this info, I was told what I didn’t expect at all. I needed part of my lung removed. This made my heart drop. Anyways moving forward I was blessed with a surgeon who had actually seen one of these cases before and was a leader in robotic surgery. That summer I was able to robotically have a lobectomy. While it caused no doubt some of the greatest pain I have ever felt, it makes me unique. I may be missing part of my lung and have a bunch of scars to show it now, but in the end, it makes me unique!