UPDATE 4-1-09 - YIKES!!!

Mom came out to meet me when I was feeding the animals this morning. Evidently when she was getting into bed last night, she heard a loud “POP!” and a suture busted that held in one of her drain tubes. The tube was still in (they are scrunched up into her body and are about 2’ long), but it was starting to pull out. Mom taped the tube aggressively to her body to prevent it from pulling out any further, but it wasn’t working. The tube had pulled out 6-8” and it wasn’t pretty, to say the least. I’ll save you some details here, but basically we needed to get over to the hospital. The main problem was that the tube really wasn’t ready to come out yet. It was still producing more than what her body would be able to absorb on its own. We got on the phone with Nurse Margaret in Triage (who is starting to know us well now) right away, who asked me, “Do I hear chickens???” when I got her on the line. HAHA! Yes, I was feeding animals and surrounded by chickens and ducks, AND was wearing Ruby on my back. Margaret got an earful of ranch and baby noises while we were trying to explain exactly what was going on. The main thing she needed to know was if the drain lost suction, which it had. With that being the case, she knew it needed to come out. She made arrangements for Mom to get in as soon as we’d get there.

We finished up feeding animals, got cleaned up for the day and headed right over to the City of Hope. Ruby and I dropped Mom off at the entrance of the building she needed to go to, and we took off to find a parking spot. We figured it would only take a few minutes for Mom’s appointment so we headed right over to the fishpond to wait for further instruction from Mom.

The appointment took longer than we’d expected. It turns out she got to see her plastic surgeon while his colleague Hillary from his office removed the rogue tube, as well as another tube that was ready to be removed. (Now Mom only has 1 tube!!! YAY) The tube that was remaining also had a busted suture, and he needed to re-stitch it up again. Mom was WAY Cowboy Tuff for this procedure. She was re-stitched with NO TOPICAL PAIN RELIEF…he just stitched her right back up with what looked like a carpet needle, and commented on how tough she was. (She told him about her Cowboy Tuff blog. hehe)

Dr. Tan also set Mom up with his colleague Hillary on a weekly basis (every Tuesday) to start injecting the silicone into her chest expanders to make way for the implants. They even gave her the first injection today! They used a funny little magnetic device to locate the ‘ports’ under her skin, inserted the needle into the ports and injected 75ml of fluid in each side. Mom experienced discomfort immediately, it definitely wasn’t pain-free…but it was a short procedure. She has felt pressure in her upper body and armpit area this whole week and was even a bit worried in the beginning that the fluid went into the wrong area or something because it felt so foreign. We’ll let you know how it goes next week!

Dr. Tan also let Mom know that she needs to back off on using her upper body. She needs to stick to the ‘no lifting over 5lbs’ rule. The reason her drains area still producing so much fluid is because she’s doing too much. SO…we’re all going to have to keep on her and make sure she’s not doing ANYTHING she shouldn’t.