Soothing my wounded lung with music
Illustration by Noemi Fabra
by Summer Tao
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When I was 20 years old, I suffered a major lung collapse. My condition was contained by pleurodesis, a surgical procedure that fuses the lung to the walls of the chest to mitigate future collapses. The good news: that lung won’t catastrophically collapse again. The bad news is that the procedure is imperfect, and I’m part of the unlucky 11% of people who experience partial collapses after surgery anyway.
My left lung is forever wounded. Every few months, my day is punctuated by jabbing chest pains and difficulty breathing — the signs of another partial collapse. For the next two weeks, I move slowly, and breathing hurts while I recover. Even without a collapse, my condition is sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. Like some arthritis patients who can sense changing weather in their joints, I feel it in my chest. (A superpower of questionable usefulness.)
Dr. Rosmy Barrios, MD., says that, “When your lung condition flares up, your body may respond with muscle tension as it tries to compensate for discomfort.” That statement adequately describes my body since I turned 20. Until some medical techno-sorcery can cure it, all I can do is find comfort.
That comfort comes in many forms: painkillers, rest days, self-reflection and… music.
Breathing through troubled times
Breathing is tightly entwined with anxiety, both as a driver and as a source of relief. Dr. Barrios refers to breathing exercises as being “widely recognized for their effectiveness in reducing anxiety.” He continues, “When you experience lung-related discomfort, anxiety can often accompany it. Guided breathing can alleviate anxiety by promoting relaxation and calming the nervous system.”
Anxiety is also psychosomatic. Its mental aspect fuels observable physical symptoms, which can create a horrible feedback loop. I’m no stranger to these relationships, being an anxiety sufferer myself. During recovery, I learned that the quickest way to worsen anxiety was to pair it with lung damage.
My partial collapses are marked by pain. The pain of a collapsed lung struggling against air pressure squeezing it from inside, and the pain of a body fighting back. Dr. Barrios puts it more eloquently: “When your lung condition flares up, your body may respond with muscle tension as it tries to compensate for discomfort.”
Frustratingly, this tension would open the road to anxiety. Not being able to breathe properly is a disconcerting and understandable cause for fear.
During those early flare-ups, I turned to music for comfort. At first, I did it to distract myself, but I soon noticed a pattern: if I relaxed and focused on the music, I could gradually match my breathing and mood to the song's tempo. The results came slowly and steadily (like good breathing). It kept the runaway anxiety at bay. It took my mind off the tension in my shoulder and diaphragm. It reminded me to breathe. I didn’t know at the time, but I was creating a personalized breathing regimen.
Noemi Fabra
Life begins and ends with airflow
I don’t believe for a moment that guided breathing will heal the damage I’ve suffered. There’s a stark difference between curing a condition and coping with the symptoms. In the absence of a cure, mitigation will have to do. In that environment, even basic guided breathing can help. For an agitated lung, Dr. Barrios says that, “By consciously controlling your breath, you engage the diaphragm and chest muscles in a coordinated manner, which can help release muscle tightness and reduce aches.” She adds that, “Focused breathing can promote deeper inhalation and exhalation, helping to improve oxygen exchange in the lungs. It can also prevent shallow breathing, which may exacerbate discomfort and muscle tension.”
Through this flow, it’s possible to turn the psychosomatic function of anxiety against itself. Rather than letting my anxiety ride my body to exhaustion, I can focus on the controllable. I can’t chase the anxiety away, but I can focus on breathing. Some of that benefit filters down to the anxiety and relieves it. My preferred song for this is “Weightless” by Marconi Union, a song that was written with the express purpose of reducing anxiety. It holds the dubious honor of being so relaxing that researchers have cautioned against listening to it while driving.
My birthday last month marked the ninth year of not being able to move faster than a brisk walk or do more than moderate exercise. I was sad to trade the peak physical performance of my twenties for pain and stress. However, once I adjusted to my newly impaired body, I found relief in the basics: music and breathing.