John OsborneChief Medical Officer, ClearCardio LLC · Preventive cardiologist and Chief Medical Officer at ClearCardio

My Life Was Hanging by a Thread": Emergency Surgery

29 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this first‑person video, the speaker recounts a sudden, life‑threatening chest injury. After being elbowed in the chest and later collapsing on a staircase, he experiences excruciating, knife‑like pain with every breath. Emergency physicians decide between a sternotomy (opening the breastbone) and a posterior thoracotomy; the speaker insists on the back approach to avoid breaking his sternum. Surgeons perform a posterior thoracic incision, manually free his lung from the chest wall, and complete the operation with only local Novocaine for the incision. The experience leaves him in severe pain and leads to a period of coping through increased alcohol consumption and overeating. The narrative emphasizes the physical trauma, the rapid surgical decision‑making, the invasive nature of the procedure, and the emotional aftermath.

Chapters

I got elbowed in the chest, knocked the wind out of me, didn't think anything of it. And then I was walking upstairs in our house that night and I just like collapsed on the stairs. And at the time it was the most painful thing I'd ever experienced. Like, I just— every breath was just knives. No anesthesia. I'm fully awake. They gave me Novocaine for the incision and that's it. We can go through your sternum or we can go through your back. So I said, no sternum. And then he says, Chris, it's a quicker recovery. Despite us breaking your sternum? I said, no, no, go through my back. They went through my back and he had to take his hand into my chest cavity, pull off my lung from the chest wall. That was when I really kind of just started using alcohol and food to kind of cope with a lot of things.