Saturday 14 January 2012

Chest tube out

Daphne started this week much the same.  Although instead of being exclusively on C-PAP she goes on trials on high-flow (these are the little prongs in her nose.)  Although one night she did struggle a lot even on C-PAP so she was put on Bi-PAP for a little while.  They did a chest x-ray and her chest was extremely wet.  Since her chest tube hadn’t been draining, this meant that her chest tube was plugged so they put TPA (a clot buster) in the line.  They have had to do this quite a bit as her chest tube is very small.  After the TPA took effect the chest tube started draining and the Bi-PAP was no longer necessary. 

Monday they decided to put in a new chest tube because the previous one was plugged again and her chest x-ray was not good.  They did put the same size tube in.  Here are some pictures from that day.  They show how much Rowan loves visiting her sister and it’s hard to tell from the pictures, but Daphne also loves the visits from her goofy sister.



Wednesday the site around the chest tube started leaking.  A chest x-ray showed that the tube had almost come out.  We weren’t allowed to hold her now or put her on high-flow.  The next day the chest tube wasn’t draining any fluid at all and the site was still leaking so they decided to take out the chest tube.  After that we were allowed to hold her again and she was allowed to go on high-flow trials again.  In this picture she is happily kicking her feet in the air. 


Friday we had some great news.  The site where Daphne’s chest tube was in barely leaked any fluid and her chest x-ray looked very good!  This means the chylothorax might be gone!  We can’t say it’s gone for sure just yet.  She will still need daily chest x-rays to watch for fluid accumulation.  We pray this is the end of chylothorax. 

Yesterday Daphne had another long visit with her sister that they both loved.


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