I haven’t had a scary experience like this for several years and it immediately brought me back to my panic attack in 2016 when I thought I was dying. I recently had to go to the emergency room and it was a truly anxiety-inducing trip. 

So many of you have reached out with encouragement and positive vibes and it’s been incredibly overwhelming. In this episode, I’m sitting down raw and vulnerable to tell you all the deets. 

Keep reading to learn:

1. What happened to land me in the ER

2. The importance of slowing down

3. How you can support me during this time

I truly appreciate each and every message I receive. I’m resting up and taking care of myself so I can keep bringing you all the good stuff. 

So buckle up friend and let’s dive in…

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My Most Recent Trip to the ER

I tell ya, when you need to slow down the universe will do anything in its power to make sure you’re doing exactly that. 

If you’re following me on Instagram, you’ve probably already seen the stories of what’s happened. But I wanted to make sure to give you a full update as I know there’s been a lot of worried concerns. I’m doing okay, but I’ve got a long road ahead of me.

Pneumothorax 

That’s the fancy term for what happened: pneumothorax. For those of us without medical degrees, that means that I have a collapsed lung. And let me tell you, it has not been fun. 

On Wednesday last week, I went to the chiropractor for my usual appointment. This was about the fourth visit with this chiropractor. I had been getting dry needling and some adjustments. 

To be quite honest, some of the adjustments had been really painful. At a previous appointment, I spent the entire week between appointments with horrible pain. So it was safe to say that pain in my chiropractor appointments wasn’t unusual. 

So at this particular appointment, I was getting dry-needling in the muscles around my spine before getting an adjustment. The sheer force of the adjustment made me feel like I had gotten the wind knocked out of me. 

However, I am the queen at minimizing my own pain and simply brushed it off as being part of the appointment.The chiropractor said they would really like to do one more adjustment after taking a minute to regain my composure. Walking out of the offive I was in a lot of pain and could barely move around. 

Since I had experienced pain after previous appointments, I didn’t think too much of it and went home. 

That Doesn’t Sound Right

I was exhausted when I got home. Although for a moment I thought something might have been up, I shrugged it off as a typical “afternoon slump” and I dozed off. It wasn’t until I woke up to even more pain and couldn’t get off the couch that I really started to worry.

I started to have a panic attack when I could hear and feel bubbles on the left side of my chest. I have a family history of heart attacks and I was convinced that’s what was happening to me. I was advised by the chiropractor’s office to go to the urgent care.

After some x-rays it was confirmed that I had a collapsed lung. I was put on oxygen to help me breathe and the doctors wanted to keep me in the hospital. Turns out, collapsed lungs aren’t something to mess around with.

However, I wasn’t resting well in the hospital and couldn’t get comfortable and eventually, I asked if I could rest at home. I was given strict instructions that if anything to worse I was to call 911 immediately. Talk about scary. 

The Next Steps

The next night, I had to go back for more X-rays. The X-rays showed that I wasn’t getting any better or worse and I was told to keep a close eye on it. Which is kind of ironic because I can’t really see what’s happening. 

That was part of what really stressed me out. And made it easier to minimize my own pain. I couldn’t see that something was wrong and I made myself believe that because it wasn’t visible, it wasn’t real. Which was proven to be completely false. 

I ended up back in the hospital Saturday for half the day feeling the bubbles again. Nothing had changed according to test results though.

So now I’m here, resting and taking it easy. I’m in a lot of pain and I’m barely able to move. 

My mom just arrived in town, we were supposed to go to the mountains together for a spa getaway but that’s out of the cards now. I’m grateful to have her and Nick around to help take care of me. I don’t even know how I would’ve done this alone. 

I don’t have exact timelines of when I’ll be fully healed. Each doctor has given me different times. It could be anywhere from two weeks to two months. I’m in the dark and there’s not a lot I can do, which is a struggle for me because I want to do everything. 

So I wanted to give you an update on what’s going on in my life. Right now, I’m just resting as I don’t know exactly when I’ll be fully healed and get to go back to “normal”. I’m really just taking it hour by hour, day by day and I really hope the improvements start coming sooner than later. 

I’m going to continue to try to show up as best I can and I wanted to thank you for your love and support. Your DMs and messages are so appreciated and I’m reading each and every one of them.

If you wanna keep listening to more episodes of The Anxious Creative podcast, I’ve put together a list of my top 10 episodes. You can check that out here.

Thanks for your support and understanding as I navigate this recovery. See ya next time, friend. 

Let’s be besties?