After the Nuss...

So I'm having issues getting the first chest X ray (CXR) image right after the Nuss was done on April 21.  (If I can get it, I will put it in here.

But this first image was taken sometime around midnight on Memorial Day, when my pleural space (space between lungs and chest wall) was full of fluid.

I recognize that probably none of you are radiologists, so I helpfully scribbled annotations on my imaging.  (I may hate Windows 10, but I do love my Surface and FreshPaint is the BEST.  COMPUTER.  SOFTWARE.  EVER.)  (And I have written software, so ....I'm not dumb about this stuff.)

The GREAT thing about the image below is that for the first time in my life, MY HEART IS IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!!  (You just can't tell cos my chest cavity is full of infected schmag.  But I am looking on the bright side at the moment.

That was when I had the first CT scan, on May 29/30 (it was sometime that night).  You are looking at a slice of my body.  I am laying on my back.  You are looking at a cross-section of me, near the top-ish area of my lungs, but below my clavicles.  (Does that help?)

Continuing to move down my chest, still in slices....here's another fun one:

And one more (just cos I can, and wow this is fun to write all over my imaging....)  I think you get the idea here, but my lung bases were just floating in cootie-filled plasma.  Gross, right?  Aside from the "ew" factor, most importantly:  IT WAS REALLY FRICKIN HARD TO BREATHE.  Remember that water weighs more than air.  I could only do one flight of stairs before resting a full five minutes.  I couldn't sleep lying down, I had to lay sitting at a 45 degree angle.

Then I had two "taps," thoracenteses.  They stuck a needle into my pleural space, and from the plastic catheter drained out 2.25 liters of plasma, blood, and cooties.  Then I looked like the image below.  I felt like I was breathing GREAT!  Goes to show what I was used to.  (i.e.  That is not a "GREAT" image.)

I got my third tap, and this is how I looked after that.

Without boring you guys to death with the interim CXRs, I will show you the one from July 15. Aaaand....(drumroll here):  BOOM!  Look at that beautiful CXR!

So, of course, the story doesn't end with the CXRs.  There was the post CT scan.  You can see goo still (I had some left that they couldn't get out....it was too painful, and I asked them to stop.)  Most people can reabsorb small pleural effusions (and I did). 

But this shot is the reason I have to have another surgery.  This CT was done on June 2.

So.  That's what I need fixed.  But more than that, I need to have the crumpled up cartilage that CAUSED the fracture to be fixed.  Which is visible in this slice, further up my body:

So.  That's why I have to go back.  So she can cut out the creaky old cartilage, and get that bone fragment from poking my ventricle.  You need the ventricles in your heart.  Shouldn't be stuff pokin in there.

So yeah.  That's my story so far.