Rough Days, Sunny Days

Monday I had the Pleurx catheter implanted. It was done by Dr. Yablonsky, an interventional radiologist. Everything went well including the fact that the conscious sedation kicked in at exactly the right time rendering me unconscious during the painful parts and waking up exactly when it was over. Terry and I left the hospital with me feeling quite well.

Later in the night the local anesthesia wore off and pain set in where they had made two incisions. It was bearable. By Tuesday afternoon the pain was worse but I’m accustomed to that kind of pain and knew it would pass within a few days. However a bigger was developing. Fluid was leaking from the incision where the catheter exited my abdomen. It wasn’t blood or puss or anything like that. It was the ascites fluid. The leaking got worse and worse until it was literally continuous, saturating dressing after dressing as well as my clothes. Obviously something was wrong. I called the hospital and they told me to come in Wednesday morning. It was a long night.

Wednesday AJ brought me to the hospital where we had a little fun with the woman at the registration desk. She had a little trouble with the fact that we both have the same name so she kept asking me my birth date. Dr. Yablonsky examined the incision and gave me the comforting news that he had never seen anything like this before. He brought me back into the procedure room where he looked and poked while watching on the x-ray screens. There was no anesthesia this time and he was poking and pushing pretty hard, trying to reposition the catheter and exit tubing. It hurt! He was not able to reach any definitive conclusion. He thought the problem might be that there was too much soft tissue around the tubing. I think “soft tissue” is the medical term for blubber.

Dr. Yablonsky decided to try abandoning the Pleurx method at least temporarily. He connected the tube to a bag in order to provide a continuous gravity drain. The idea is to not allow any accumulation of fluid in hopes that while dry, the “channel” that the exit tubing creates will heal and seal itself off. He told me if there was any more leakage everything would have to come out and I would be a Pleurx failure. If the leaking stops, we’ll wait at least two weeks for the channel to heal and then hope we can go back to the Pleurx. If at that point the leakage does return everything would come out. I think there’ also the possibility of continuing with the bag, an option I don’t like right now. He said we could also try implanting the catheter on the other side which to me seems questionable.

As of right now there has been no more leakage and the pain is going away. So far so good. But I hate the bag.

Then last night God sent us a consolation gift. Around midnight, Terry’s son Joe called from Arizona to give us the news of the birth of his and his wife Susan’s baby boy, Joseph Richard. What a pleasure it was to see Terry so joyous. Life goes on and new life joins in.

And one more thing ……………………

This is the tree Terry and I planted in the simmer of ‘08. This is the third spring bloom I’ve seen, at least two more than I expected. Warm weather is coming. So is the sun. I love the warm weather and the sun.

Carry on sunshine.

----------------------------------