LEAKY DRAIN

posted Sunday, 15 January 2006

Almost every time Abby comes to visit, I start to "leak"... weird... but true! When she was here in September, we got ready to go for a run (I call it a "run", but it is better described as an embarassingly slow 1 mile "shuffle") and I noticed that there was fluid leaking from my incision... despite several attempts to close it up, my body wasn't healing right (due to the chemo) and I spent the next 4 months covering myself with gauze every day, to keep clean and protect my clothes. What a pain! At least the surgery earlier this month put an end to that problem! Anyways, Abby came back down this weekend to help me out (her other two visits were wonderful, as they found me in relatively good health, and we got to play... this visit really was more to take care of me... for which I am really thankful).

Oddly enough, on Thursday night, I began to notice some wetness in my right armpit, where the drain was inserted. I brushed it off, thinking it was sweat. Friday morning, I got up and got changed (I would say "got dressed", but at this point, I was still living 24/7 in pajamas with button down tops). Within half an hour, my armpit was soaked. Dr Borah, my plastic surgeon is in charge of my post-op care, so I called his office. He was out, so they paged the on-call dr. He told me that the drains were likely getting blocked, as blood coagulated in the tubing (gross). He instructed me to "milk" the drain to clear it out, which I did successfully. However, now the bulb at the base of the tubing wouldn't hold any vacuum (you squeeze the bulb before closing it, in order to create a vacuum, which sucks the excess lymphatic fluid out and collects it in the bulb -- without the vacuum, you basically have a worthless tube hanging out of your body, creating an opportunity for infection).... I called the dr again and he told me to just watch it for redness or increased pain and he refilled my antibiotics prescription. It was about this time that I started getting sick from the antibiotics.

By Saturday, I just couldn't deal. I called Dr Borah's line again. After waiting an hour for the oncall dr to call, the answering service called me back. It turned out that Dr Borah was out of town for the weekend. I knew that if Dr Dultz was around, she would pull the drains and end my suffering at once... but I didn't want Dr Borah to be offended... but now, I had the perfect excuse. I called her up and sure enough, she was on call. She offered to meet me in the office that afternoon to take a look.

Abby drove me up to Princeton (only my 2nd time in the car and out of the house since coming home from the hospital). Dr Dultz took me back into the exam room to take a peak. She told me that she was going to pull the right drain (the leaky one) since it wasn't doing anything. I prepared for the pain (if you remember, my first drain removal "smarted" quite a bit!). Dr Dultz looked at my grimace and told me not to worry... "Dr Borah uses a different kind of drain than she does"... sure... good story! I grit my teeth and waited. Pop. She pulled out the tube... with no pain... it was just the tube inside my armpit... no big plastic anchor! Nice. The tube had practically been pulled out itself, which was why it was leaking everywhere and not holding suction.

At this point, I thought about the fact that I hadn't showered in 10 days... and I realized that if I got Dr Dultz to pull the left drain, I'd be "zest-fully" clean by the next afternoon! My left drain had also slowed down enough that she gave me the ok and pulled that one out too (to give you a comparison, the left drain had ~2 inches of tubing inside my skin, while the right drain had less than 1/2 an inch). She asked me to take the antibiotics for one more day and then I could shower! Yay!

I choked down 4 more keflex, knowing that they were making me disgustingly ill, kept pounding gatorade to ward off dehydration and hoped for the best.

Sunday afternoon, I dragged myself upstairs and turned on the water. Stepping into the shower, I let the warm water run over my head (fortunately, I didn't have to deal with disgusting hair after 10 days of no shower!)... it felt so good. I was finally clean. A shower has never felt so good. Never.