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I wake up feeling a heavy pressure on my chest. Not again. Not today. Please just give me a break. I don't want to hurt anymore.

Welcome to my life. Where lung pain is a regular occurrence. I open my eyes and know right off the bat how much it is going to hurt when I get out of bed. It fills you with a sense of dread. How can someone only 24 years old have chronic lung pain?

Well it goes like this. I was fourteen years old and I was having a lot of chest pain and when I lay down I could hear my chest make crackling noises like snap! crackle! pop! Yes, just like Rice Krispies. I went days like that before I ended up at outpatients. I got an x-ray and the survey said spontaneous pneumothorax, a partially collapsed lung.

That was just the beginning. By the time I was sixteen, I had more than ten lung collapses and seven operations. Nothing worse than being in the hospital, getting surgery, staying there for a week, coming home and having to go back the next day due to another lung collapse. Another time i was in the hospital for a week, home for a week and then in the hospital again.

It was my nightmare. Nothing makes you grow up quicker than being a teenager and having to decide what operation to get. One operation would have a 1% chance of recurrence, the other 3%. It didn't matter. It just happened over and over again.

By the time I hit my last operation, I was sixteen. My surgeon and I decided that since my lung collapses wouldn't stop, that he'd do a more serious operation that would remove the lining between my lungs and ribs so my lungs would stick to my rib cage and it wouldn't be able to collapse anymore. The answer to my prayers and an even scarier nightmare.

It went well though I couldn't do much for six weeks and I was in unbearable pain. But it spared me any more lung collapses. The unfortunate consequence to all these operations was being told that I would have lung pain for the rest of my life. Imagine being told this at sixteen! I was devastated. At first, it was lung pain here and there....and then it was when I was stressed or if it was too hot or cold....now it's everyday. Some days are worse than others. Sometimes it isn't too bad and sometimes I feel like my lungs are going to explode and sometimes I wonder how I can still be alive and in that much pain. It's a daily fight in which there is no winner. But no matter how much pain I'm in, I refuse to let it stop me. I'm going to keep living my life to the fullest. I'm not going to let my lung pain stop me. I'm going to keep fighting. I won't let lung pain keep me from living my life.

Learn more about this author, Natalie OConnell.
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