Another Day...... Another Day....

Hey everyone... I hope that everyone had a good week and is almost ready for the weekend!  As far as the medical stuff goes with my abdomen, I had an interesting day of ups and downs yesterday.  We were originally supposed to have the procedure to drain my abdomen of fluid again, which is bittersweet.  It's not the most fun thing in the world, but it feels so  much better afterwards in regards to pain.  It relieves pain in my back since so much weight is put on so quickly.  I wasn't going to let the pain/pressure in the front and back get ANYWHERE near where it was last when I had to go in.  

Oh boy.. that was bad.  They had to drug me up quite a bit to get my pain to tolerable.  But anyways, this time that I went in I found out there was a possibility of putting a catheter in my back/side to get rid of fluid in the pleural (I think thats right?) area.  It's the area around your lungs but not IN them...This brought back memories of many pleural cathetars that were in for weeks and usually being pulled out just to be put back in in another spot, or side, or both.  Anywho, I was NOT happy when I found out about the possible lung drainage that day.  I knew it would come up at some point, we were thinking about a chest x-ray especially with the thought of pnemonia, but he just used his ultrasound that he used on my tummy to mark to also look in my lung area for fluid but didn't see any YAAAYYYYY!!!!!! This made me so happy I cannot even tell you.  I wouldn't have them left in or anything, just drained and removed...but still I was scared.  

 

Anyways, we emptied another 4 liters of fluid since last Wednesday (so 7 days) but this time the catheter was left in.  It's entry point is on my right side, opposite of my ostomy.  There is a tube running on the bottom part of that area in my belly, almost like a smiley face at the bottom (but you can't see the tube.)  The tube is relatively small, and it looks like one of those hoses with all the holes in them.  So whenever I feel that I need to empty it I will be able to do this at home, but have to be so careful and clean.  Its another large risk of infection so I need to be careful.  When its not in use there's about 6 inches or so of tube in a circle on top of a foam pad thing (definitely the medical lingo) and then we use a tegaderm (clean plastic sticky barrier we use for lots of things) to keep it down and sterile.  

So that hopefully was enough medical stuff to make up for my last blog that was more "diary" entry as I call it.  Today I actually have quite a visitor!  Dr. Moon from Miami is going to be in town for a medical conference I think, so he's coming over for a while!  This is exciting!  It is a bit of bad timing though.  I'm moving very slowly and in pain now from the procedure and I would have loved for him to see me moving about more freely, but hey whatcha gonna do?  Also I'm usually using the oxygen most of the day now, but again, oh well!  If it weren't for him this blog wouldn't be posted.  Hope everyone has a good weekend, maybe I'll find something interesting for a post.  It's a bit nippy outside but enjoy the outdoors before snow (ewwwwwwwww) while we can :)  As always-

Lots of Love,

Sammy

P.S. soooomebody I know who maybe happens to be one of the greatest dad's in the world has quite a big birthday coming up.  We're gonna have to break out the AARP cards, wheelchairs, maybe even lend my oxygen tanks over to someone on the 15th. ;) Love ya daddy