Firstly, I have to say that I’m not a clinician so I can only offer a patients-side view of things, so don’t take this as a medical opinion! That said, I’m interested in your doctor’s plan for you to have both your lungs operated on at much the same time. I take it from that that you’ve already experienced problems with both lungs? I’ve never heard of “pre-emptive” operations so to speak, so I take it that you must have had pneumothoraxes and other significant problems.

Here in New Zealand at least this type of surgery is done in cardio-thoracic units, so you find yourself in wards with both cardiac surgery patients and lung surgery patients. My experience has been that the cardiac patients look like death warmed up before their (bypass) operations, but that they seem to recover from their operations very quickly. But with lung operations it often seems the opposite – they seem externally okay before their operation but then the recovery is comparatively long and very painful.

My advice, having had pluerodesis operations on each of my lungs, would be to avail yourself of all the pain-relief medication that the medical staff will allow. These operations are very uncomfortable, and there’s no value in trying to tough it out.

Expect to have a relatively slow recovery for the first month or two, but expect to ultimately get back to full health and fitness and to not have any ongoing niggles or discomfort.