A two-time cancer survivor, Rose Ventress gets preventative health screenings every five years. That’s how Ventress found out she had a collapsed lung.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — One year after a life-saving surgery, a Knoxville woman is sharing her message about the value of preventive health care.
A coronary calcium scan is a noninvasive imaging test that assesses plaque in coronary arteries and helps predict the risk of future heart attacks. It can also reveal issues beyond the heart. That’s what happened to Rose Ventress after a recent scan.
Just a few hours after that scan, her phone rang.
“That’s the first thing that came through my mind is I really don’t have time for this,” Ventress remembered.
Ventress said she didn’t realize how serious the situation was until her doctor told her to go to the emergency room.
“The radiologist called me directly after 5 o’clock and said, ‘Hey, are you having trouble breathing?” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘No I’m fine. Like why?”
“Her lung just randomly collapsed,” Jason Pittman, a registered respiratory therapist, explained. “It can happen with trauma patients. Their ribs break, puncture a lung, air goes where it’s not supposed to and it closes up, but sometimes it just happens spontaneously and your lung just collapses.”
Pittman treated Ventress at UT Medical Center. In his role, Pittman gives breathing treatments, manage ventilators and assess patients’ breathing among other methods of cardiopulmonary care.
“It’s not normal to just see spontaneous pneumos all the time so when that happens, it’s kind of special,” Pittman said.
Despite Ventress having a collapsed lung, she says she didn’t notice any previous symptoms. If not for the preventive calcium CT scan — which she gets every five years — Ventress says she wouldn’t have known something was wrong.
Ventress has survived two kinds of cancers: kidney and endometrial. That’s why she says she takes preventative health care so seriously.
“I can’t express enough how important I think it is to stay in one place and have all your care where they can really see what’s going on because of the electronic management system and able to look at all that kind of stuff,” Ventress added about her preference to get treated at UT Medical Center across different departments. “And I feel like that continuum of care is really important.”
With a chest tube and care from her medical team, Ventress said she made a full recovery.
“I was told that I was very lucky,” she shared.
Now nearly a year later, Pittman had the chance to connect with his patient and see her progress.
“She looks great now so, you know, you’re with somebody in one of the most trying times of their life, so it’s just good to see them fully recovered and healthy and back to their normal life,” Pittman said.
Ventress said she was eager to thank him after running into him in the hallway.
“He probably thought I was a crazy woman because I basically tackled him and told him thank you for taking care of me,” Ventress laughed.
“She just happened to randomly see me and just thanked me hand over foot and was very appreciative of me and I was just happy to be recognized honestly,” Pittman added. “It felt good. It was very rewarding. Made me feel like I did something of importance to somebody.”
Nearly a year after surgery, Ventress said she plans to keep up with preventive testing — and encourages others to do the same.
“I’m a big advocate of taking care of yourself, watching it, so I’ll pay the $99 to get the test, and I mean it definitely made a big impact on my health journey,” she explained.
“It doesn’t hurt to be preventative,” Pittman agreed. “Just take care of yourself in the long run. You can find things that you might not have known were there.”
Calcium scoring is a screening that doesn’t require a doctor’s order, although insurance does not cover the test. At UT Medical Center, there is a $99 out-of-pocket cost.
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