When I had my surgery, the doctor took out four liters of fluid. If you have never had fluid in your abdomen area, be glad. I got a little bloated due to the fluid but mainly bloated due to the tumor. Also, if I turned quickly to the right or to the left, I could feel the fluid "flow" that way. Odd feeling!! Just plain old weird. I had hoped that would be the end of the fluid and it would not come back.
Well, the fluid did come back. It seemed to take some time to build up to where I was uncomfortable. My doctor's office was trying to get in me in for a CT Scan of my abdomen but that was a whole mess with the insurance company. Essentially, the denied it. They wanted to do a Peer to Peer Review with the doctor. The young lady who tries to set these types of appointments up said that the Peer to Peer Reviews usually do not go well. That was not sounding good at all. She also told me that if I got to the point of being uncomfortable, I could go ahead to a local Emergency Room and see what happened there.
After much talk with my husband, I went to a local Emergency Room. They did a CT Scan there and I had fluid in my abdomen. (Not like I did not know that anyway but at least it was confirmed!) The Emergency Room physician explained that I had two choices - see if the Radiology Department there at the hospital could "fit" me into their schedule tomorrow but I would have to stay overnight or I could go home and talk it over with my doctor. I asked the doctor to see if I could be fit in with the Radiology Department tomorrow and if I could be, I would stay overnight. Luck was on my side!!
I spent overnight in an Observation Room and really did not know what time I was going to be seen by someone in the Radiology Department. Lucky for me, they came at about 8:00 a.m. and I was on my way!!
The procedure was not as bad as I had made it out to be in my head. There were two ladies there that were as nice as can be!! I really enjoyed talking with them and our conversation seemed to be focused a lot on travel. Nice way to take my mind off getting poked and being drained. They did an ultrasound, found the fluid and figured out to take it out on my left side. Now, I am going to describe this process but it was not really painful as I thought it would be.
What they did was to numb an area on the lower side of my stomach. They also used a needle to numb me a bit below the skin. Thank goodness!! After I was good and numb as can be, a tube was inserted in the area and the fluid started to drain out. The fluid was an amber like color. It was not clear but it looked as normal as can be according to the ladies there. So glad it all looked okay.
Ready for this? They drained three and a half liters out of me!! Wow!! I could not believe that I had accumulated that much fluid!! What the heck was going on there? I think it is some way for the body to deal with the cancer in my body but do not hold me to that. If you want a correct answer, ask your doctor!! They probably will know better than me!!
Once that was done, I ended up calling my doctors office to let them know so if they needed to obtain those records, they could do so. I also ended up with an appointment with my doctor to discuss this and a few other new things. (That will be covered in a later post.)
The name of this procedure was called Paracentesis. It did not hurt too much. All I really felt was a prick, or two. I really felt a lot of relief once the fluid was out. I was not as uncomfortable as I was the day before. How nice was that!!
Will this happen again? Probably. Will I have to do it again? Probably. At least I know what to expect and the doctor and nurse practitioner can keep an eye on it. If it does have to be done again, we can just go ahead and set up an appointment to get it done without having to go to the Emergency Room and that whole deal again. I guess I will just have to wait and see what happens.
Thanks for stopping by!!
Jenn
No comments:
Post a Comment