More Fun With Drains

Yesterday we enjoyed a pleasant Halloween. I do not know if I mentioned this before, but L was a gorgeous gypsy, C was a handsome Harry Potter, and Baby was a pumpkin. We had a tasty dinner of witches brew (stew) and pumpkin shaped biscuits. L decorated the table with a festive tablecloth, place mats, cloth napkins, and napkin ring holders. She loves to have a reason to set the table fancy.

Halloween also was the day my arm and right side started talking to each other, and sometimes they did not have nice things to say. The numbness has been slowly wearing off and finally it wore off enough that I noticed again when they touched I felt it. The feeling was not necessarily a nice one, but I am still glad to have that feeling again.

The baby has been totally taken over the bottle feeding. She puts her hands up on the bottle when we give it to her, and she lights up when she sees it. The downside is if we take it out of her mouth to wipe her little milk beard off our darling angel gets very mad. She makes sounds that I can only describe as baby swearing. The first time we were surprised at the violent angry noise that came out of her mouth, but now we just view it as another part of her personality.

Today was the big day for the doctor to take the drains and the staples out. My dear husband asked me to look at the ends of the tubes and see how they collect the fluid. This made my mom interested as well. My dad did not really want to know, and I did not care as long as they came out. I thought they had come out and told the nurse I did not really feel it at all. She said, "No, that was not it. You WILL feel it when they come out." Then she had me take a deep breath and then let it out and she pulled the two on the right side out. She was right I could really tell when they took them out. She showed them to me when I asked her to, and I was very surprised at how big the white part inside my body was. It was 6-8 inches depending on the drain plus 2 inches of the tube. Here is a picture of the tube from a medical supply website.


After describing them to my husband, they reminded him of French Drains. They are used for low wet areas in landscaping and he used to work in a landscape company. Here is one from a landscape company website.
I am just glad they are out and everything looked well at the doctor. Tomorrow I have a MUGA test (a heart scan) and an ultrasound of my kidneys. These will help the doctor with assessing my health for the next round of chemo.