What a long, strange trip it's been.....And it's not over yet

Well, it has been about a month since my last post and what a month it has been ! The ultrasound showed that I did have a few pockets of fluid hanging around. I also still had my last drain in from the surgery. My doc decided to remove the drain and I was finally free !!! It only took 4 months, but it felt so great to finally be able to move around without that thing attached. You get so used to having the drain, you don't realize how much you are restricted by it. After that came out, I noticed that my stomach was still not right. I was worried about more fluid collection, so we did another ultrasound and that revealed a decrease in the size of the fluid pockets, so that was a plus.

So, if it wasn't fluid collection, what the heck was wrong ? All along, I had been told that it was fluid. It was cellulitis. It was inflammation. It would get better, just give it some time. But it was not getting better. So I asked my doctor to explain what was going on. He explained that the scar tissue grew between my skin and muscle, it would need some time to grow back together correctly. The scar tissue also pushed everything around, causing the inflammation in my stomach area. We decided to wait a few months, try to let things heal and settle, then we will decide where to go from here. I may try massage therapy and see if that might help the swelling go down. At this point, I will try anything !

This may seem like I am whining, but my clothes still do not fit right. After wearing sweat pants for 4 months, I had to try and find something in my closet to wear to work. I still have a bulged out area where the mass was removed, so I need pants that will allow some space in that area. I also have the swollen area on the right side. So, a lot of the my shirts and blouses don't fit either. My stomach looks like a roller coaster. :( I know that this is temporary, but it is disappointing.

Your Body is A Wonderland......

More like a war zone. Seriously. My stomach looks like a treasure map. Stitches, Doctor's markings, stretch marks, scabs. I'm a hot mess. Ever since New Year's Eve, when I first started to notice the abdominal swelling and the big "bulge" in my lower abdomen, I had been feeling discomfort and pain. I went from having a nice, flat tummy to having a lumpy, bumpy mess of a stomach.

Maybe I had just gained some weight or was retaining water. Everyday, I would ask my husband to compare the lumps to the day before.Was one side larger ? I even took a bunch of pictures to try and see if I could tell the difference. Nothing was happening except that I was feeling more and more upset about how things were turning out. After about a month and a half, we finally decided that we needed to go in and see what was going on. I wasn't really nervous about the surgery, but more nervous that I was just being vain and my "pumpkin" belly was just how it was going to be. The doc was only in for about 30 minutes. He pulled out a grapefruit-sized mass of scar tissue and infected tissue from my lower abdomen. It was like "Bam ! I told you so !" Who is excited that there was a mass removed ? This girl !

So, fast forward a week, and I noticed ANOTHER lump right (I know, right ?!?) under my rib on the same side where the last mass was removed. This one is smaller, feels like a golf ball. I called the office and the nurse told me to come in the next day. My doc wasn't there, so I saw another doc who wasn't sure what it was. He didn't think that it was muscular, but wasn't sure what it was. Seriously ! I thought that doctors knew everything !! I seem to get a lot of "I'm not sure what it is...." or "I don't know why this is happening....". I guess that I should have gone to medical school if you only have to know SOME things..... Ok. back to the topic.... He scheduled an ultrasound for the following week, a day after my next appointment with my regular doc. My doctor wasn't much more help. He wasn't sure either, so we went ahead with the ultrasound.

That was Wednesday and today is Sunday. I haven't heard from the office, but I guess no news is good news, right ? I was assuming that I would get the results at my appointment on Tuesday. So, until then, my golf ball and I will be waiting patiently for a diagnosis.

I was pumped full of alcohol and didn't even catch a buzz

Hello. My name is Kelly and I have a seroma. "Hi Kelly".
I wish that there were a support group  for this darn thing. Some days, it feels like I got into the ring with Rocky and I was Ivan Drago. My stomach area feels so tight and it is a constant ache. Getting up out of the seated position or from laying down is a chore and I end up hunched over until I can eventually straighten myself out. The good news is that it is not permanent and it is really a minor complication.

The explanation that my doctor gave me about my continuous draining was that after the surgery, the cavity where the tissue was removed from did not close up completely on its own. Any gaps allow serum (drainage) that occurs naturally in the body to collect in the empty space. Since there is a mini-vacuum installed there, it sucks all of the liquid out.

Solution: Sclerosing the seroma. My doctor took the drainage tube off of the bulb, then injected it with an alcohol/lidocaine solution, which went directly into the cavity. He then clamped it off and left me. I waited in the examining chair. And waited. And waited. After about 30 minutes, he reconnected the tube to a new bulb and the solution came back out. After dumping it, I was able to go home. What they failed to tell me was that the liquid coming out now was no longer "grapefruit juice" or "lemonade", it was straight up vampire blood. Pretty gross.The drainage amount is down, so yeah me !

The idea behind sclerosing the cavity is to irritate the lining and make it try to heal on its own. This may work the first time, or it make take a few repeat treatments to obtain the desired result. At this point, I am willing to try anything because it doesn't seem to want to close up on its own. The alternative is to go back to the surgery room, open up and clean the area out. The last thing that I want right now is another recovery period. I am finally able to do things that I couldn't do a few weeks ago. I am hoping that it will not come to this. On the positive side, it would give me more time to work on the blog :)
 

Drain, drain, go away.....

Well, I couldn't make it to my next appointment with this seroma. My stomach was so tight and all that I could feel was pressure. My regular doc was not in, but his nurse came in to see me. The "fill-in" doc said that this would resolve itself on it's own if we had left it, but since I was there, we would try and see if we could drain some out. If there was a lot, he would decide what to do.

The first thing that he did was take out the remaining Penrose drain. Then, he inserted a long skinny tube in the area where the drain was. He attached a "turkey baster" syringe to the tube and began draining some of the fluid. (I was happy that he didn't have to use the needle. Not gonna lie....) He withdrew two full syringes (60mL) and decided that there was more in there than he thought. It went across my whole belly area.

Plan B: Insert a new drain. I can't believe that I am going to say this, but I was kind of excited to get a new JP. I know. I am a freak. It is just so much easier to maintain when all of the fluid goes to one place as opposed to catching it in a pad and not knowing how much is actually draining. So, the doc took out the syringe line and put in a shiny new JP drain.

By the time I drove home and emptied the drain, I had already released another 50 mL. So, for the next two weeks, I will be recording drainage again, in my comfy sweats. Someday  I will be drain free, just not today ! <p>

Is that a seroma, or are you just happy to see me ?

Seroma. Ick. It all started a few days after my "conversion". Once the doctor cut the bulb and drain off, there is no longer suction to the tube in draw out the fluids left in the body. Unfortunately, I think that some of those stringy tissue things have blocked up my drain and I went from changing my pad out every few hours to absolutely NOTHING draining. As the days go on, I have developed a bulge from the fluid building up.

At first, I thought maybe I was imagining it and the draining was just done, but even my husband could tell and he does a daily inspection to tell me that it has gotten bigger. I can see the bulge when I look in the mirror. One side of my belly button is flat, while the other is puffed out.

As much as I hate calling the doctor after hours, I put a call in and the on-call doctor told me not to worry. It was not likely to become infected, I just need to come in and then we could decide what to do. Of course, with my luck, this all began on New Year's Eve, so the office is closed New Year's Day and then we got a major snowstorm last night. So, I have an appointment set up for tomorrow to see what we can do. Hopefully they get the roads clear or this thing starts draining !

I am hoping that the build up will create some pressure and push the tissue stuff out of the way. So far, not so good. :(