With a chest tube inserted into his lungs, 20-year-old Arjun P. made a harrowing journey from Jalore in Rajasthan to Ahmedabad, Palakkad, Kozhikode, and Kochi, where finally he underwent a surgery for a ruptured lung, which was further delayed and complicated when he tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
After a pneumothorax or a collapsed lung that left him breathless in August, Arjun and his parents travelled by road to Ahmedabad, seven hours away.
At the airport in Ahmedabad, from where they intended to fly to Kerala, Arjun was initially barred from flying with the chest tube inserted to decompress the air that had ruptured his lung.
After a 24-hour ordeal and a medical certificate from his doctor, he was allowed to fly.
They arrived in Palakkad first, to be with family and get tested for the virus, before they proceeded for treatment.
‘Lost all hope’
Arjun tested positive, at which point he lost all hope, he said. A COVID-19 ward in a hospital in Palakkad where he saw people succumbing to the disease left him shattered and apprehensive about being able to fight both conditions.
All this while he remained acutely aware that he needed surgery for his lung, a procedure that was delayed till he tested negative. Even when he did test negative, doctors in Kozhikode were apprehensive about doing a surgery on him till he had regained some strength, said Arjun, who is studying in Ahmedabad to be a clinical pharmacist.
He remained asymptomatic, but had developed an infection from the chest tube that had stayed inside for a long time, he said.
Key-hole surgery
Dr. Nasser Yusuf, thoracic surgeon at Sunrise Hospital, Kakkanad, who had treated Arjun for a similar condition in his other lung three years ago, performed an emergency key-hole surgery in September, just a few days after Arjun tested negative for COVID-19.
“He had bronchopleural fistula or a hole in the lung, and empyema thoracis or pus in the chest. He was in severe pain and his condition was deteriorating. Normally, we would have waited for a longer period before we did a surgery, but the only option was to operate and save him. It was a long shot, but we had to take the risk,” Dr. Yusuf said.
Complication avoided
“In a COVID-19 patient, pulmonary fibrosis or even pneumonia-like changes can set in and that would have been a dreadful condition. We could avoid that complication,” he said. The pus in his chest cavity was drained and the hole in his lung was repaired.
Arjun is now with his family in Palakkad and recovering before they can go back to Jalore.
Even a walk across the airport was a painful affair a little more than a month ago, but he thanks Dr. Yusuf for being able to walk now without getting breathless.
