Lung Collapse

It happens suddenly. A sharp stab in the chest, then the feeling as though one side of your lung has simply stopped cooperating. The air you breathe in no longer arrives. You breathe — but it isn't enough. Your chest rises, your mouth is open, your body does everything it should — and yet this vacuum takes hold. Something has caved in. Literally.

In a pneumothorax, the lung detaches from the chest wall. Air enters the gap between the lung and the pleura, and the pressure that normally keeps the lung expanded disappears. The lung collapses in on itself. Like a room from which someone has knocked out the load-bearing wall.