Hello. I do not have lung cancer, my problem is that my body makes too much surfactant and I have to have lavages when the medication is not working, The whole lung lavages are quite interesting, there is a video on them on the Cleveland Clinic web site, just put in whole lung lavage and it should come up. There are also some on youtube, but there are some that are not totally correct, aka doing them the old way when they hit you to move your lungs, it's a long time ago. anyway, I am put under for about 5 hours for the procedure where they deflate the lung and put a liter of saline into my lung, shake me up and drain that liter of saline, this is done until it runs clear, they took out 20 liters on my right lung and two weeks later had my other lung done and they took out 21 liters each time they put one liter at a time in, that is why it takes so long, and then I am in ICU for the night. I must tell you, it does take a few days to get feeling ok, I am usually able to leave the hospital after a night in the ICU. I have heard of other pap people that have had 44 lung lavages, EEEK I am not sure I could make it.