Maybe stick (pun intended) to cupping or leeches....

Well, the important thing is that you were admitted after the ambulance ride, so more of it will be covered by insurance. ;-)

I jest. I'm glad you're on the mend.

The more I read, the more I realize we can injure our cardio and respiratory system even though we're in good shape. There are several guys in my bike club who have gotten A-Fib out of nowhere, they were super-fit athletes, then hit 60-something and their heart just couldn't take that any more. Next thing you know pacemaker + eBike.

Yeah, while being fit helps with a lot of potential medical conditions, it's no panacea. As a matter of fact, older folks who train hard are at higher risk for several things as they age, turns out 60 is the new (and old) 60...

What things are we at risk for? Please provide sources.

Other than a-fib, I have found no study that suggests an increased risk of anything from intense exercise--at any age.

Nada. Zip. Bupkis.

Here’s wishing you a speedy and complete recovery!

i've been through that... more times than i can recall quickly...
they were accompanied by multiple broken ribs.
damn scary not being able to breathe, eh?
the last time it happened, i was looking at Peterbilt Truck Grill, and then the airbag went off a few seconds too late...
i remember struggling to suck in air, and all i got was gunpowder smoke and talc.
Death was seconds away........ i had time to consider it.
I freaked out the EMTs when i woke up.. they were calling the Morgue Wagon when i suggested an ambulance might be a better choice...

that must be one brutal stairway.

i partially re-inflated my own lung, which further freaked out the EMTs (i'd been through this several times before)... i then told them how to get the car door open without hydraulic assistance... it involved unlocking the door.
The ambulance driver got a crash course in the relationship of Braking and cornering as we navigated the curvy Highway towards the hospital... he was doing much better by the Third set of twisties... which was also about the same time the third load of morphine kicked in.... I woke up again in 20 minutes or so... the downhill traffic going into the Tunnel had us doing repeated stop-starts... people don't know what to do to get the hell out of the way of an ambulance... maybe they're waiting for some app to tell them?
The Life Flight Chopper was busy with another accident... 6 cars on a Major Highway, in a different tunnel.. an emergency spleenectomy was one procedure i heard mentioned... i only needed a couple plates, a handful of screws, a yard of wire, and a spiral fracture of the collar bone stuck back together... meh. the sternum plates still hurt occasionally... the spiraled Collar bone hurts the most.. they never heal.
the internal organ bruises were interesting to deal with...

have the doctors helped you figure out what caused the Lung to collapse?
i recall the vent tube insertion hurting a lot more than the lung collapse... i vaguely remember kicking some nurse in response...

I am sorry to hear that and wish you a speedy recovery

No strenuous activity for a month. Do scuba or airline trips.
Chance of recurrence is at least 25% for a “first timer”.
Sorry

That's a MAJOR fail on the part of the airbag, unless there were multiple impacts and it deployed on the first impact, not able to help in further impacts. But that's not what you describe. A couple seconds late, big fail. Some GM cars had zero deployment because the detent was too soft and with many keys hanging low in the ignition key slot, the impact force turned off the ignition, disabling the airbag, before it could deploy. And after it happened a couple times, the engineer involved implemented a running change on the design without filing a formal revision or notifying anyone, when people could have been saved. That was discovered at the beginning of Mary Barra's tenure. She didn't do the normal thing and deny and fight/delay in court, GM ponied up and paid damages to all, settlements administered I think by the same attorney that handled 9/11 settlements. And the engineer was terminated, not scapegoated, they violated a major procedure for safety reporting and engineering changes, they deserved to be fired.

Getting back to you, I suppose if the truck hit your windshield before your bumper contacted the truck and triggered the airbag, maybe that's a viable explanation. But with normal contact of a vehicle or fixed obstacle, that airbag is supposed to be triggered *fast*, and inflates fast. Milliseconds. So fast that first generation airbags were a bit too fast/severe for lesser collisions, so they implemented a design that could deploy at one of two different settings based on collision severity based on g-force.

it split my sternum and stopped my heart... the detonation was about 5-7 seconds late.
the only thing that hit the windshield was me. the seat belt broke my collar bone, spiral fracture. my portable tool box hit the back of the driver seat, ripping the two rear bolts right out of the floorpan.

yes, it hurt.
if anything was at fault, it was the home made bumper on the log truck... it was too high, and my celica's bumper went under it... the air bag sensors are behind the bumper.

i have disabled the air bags in my present vehicle. they regularly kill and maim people. they were invented to save people that don't wear seat belts, more than any other reason.
when i get in a car, the seat belt is fitted before the door closes. An old habit from racing, i'd recon.

(above) Yep, your description explains it, as I noted was a possibility. By that time, the airbag should not have detonated. Yeah, underride preventers on the truck are critical, and I read they came about after the collision death of Jayne Mansfield; From wiki:

Early on I did not favor airbags, but I've come around to them as they've been improved and have variable deployment force. Still, they don't hold you in place and don't protect from a secondary collision. So I'm always belted it, though I'd prefer a 4 point harness as with just a single shoulder belt, I was told that can stretch enough for steering wheel contact (from someone that worked on airbag engineering in a previous job). Lots of cars these days have safety belt pre-tensioners that go off even quicker than the airbag. So not disconnecting mine. What everyone needs to watch out for, is a car that has been repaired and a salvage title where they didn't replace the airbag, just put a new cover on it. I recently read an article about that.

So…

Update

Followup imaging has uncovered an issue which seems to be caught early on, verified via pet;ct scan there is a nodule in the upper portion of my right lung, the one that collapsed that is highly likely stage 1 lung cancer. I’m scheduled in the next few weeks for a robotic right upper lobectomy. Operational theory is that we caught it on time and I most likely won’t need chemo. Prognosis is that I may lose some endurance.

Seen inside the circle in this image.

Turns out the PT was probably a blessing of sorts.