Under starter's orders.

I had a visit from Dr Montagna this morning who confirmed the worst, ie the air 'bubble' has not shrunk at all over the last 24 hours; he referred me to a pulmonary specialist, Dr Caviedes, who has just been to see me. Dr Montanga said that if I lived in Santiago he would be happy to release me... so we decided later to ask if I could become an outpatient - there's only so much television a man can watch.

Dr Caviedes had seen my xrays and listened to my chest and said that while he was happy for me to leave hospital, I can't leave Chile. The good news is that the air pocket is very small. But the bad news is that the lung that is partially deflated has to be completely re-inflated for at least week before I am allowed to fly (the re-inflation could take anything from 1 - 7 days.) So, we are hoping to be home a week on Saturday... best case scenario. Dr Caviedes is a great guy, really friendly; turns out he is a sailor so we spent ages talking about sailing and looking at photographs of the Falklands.

We asked him about me becoming an outpatient and he seemed happy about this but we need to run it by Dr Montanga... so keeping fingers crossed I'll get that steak tonight...