Yikes, his must be pretty bad to require that extent of surgery. I've been diagnosed with a partially collapsed lung twice, and I'm pretty certain it happened a third time due to symptoms being identical, but I never got treatment for it. First one was during a lecture on a college visit while I was in highschool, and I thought i was having a heart attack. I was just sitting in a chair, and all of sudden felt the most pain I've ever felt on the left side of my chest, could barely even walk or climb up into my dad's truck. That one was the spontaneous pneumothorax. Second (and probably third) were both skiing related and totally my fault though. I got lucky and was on the borderline of whether I would need surgery, so the Dr gave me two weeks or so I had a few weeks of tests every other day or so to make sure my lung capacity was increasing, indicating the the "hole" was healing on its own. I got lucky, but I remember at the time really not being all that thrilled with the thought of surgery or having a tube sticking out of my ribs. It might take a while to get his lung capacity back up, but he'll bounce back.