Chest tube out...again

This week was another week of ups and downs.  It started off really good.  Daphne’s chest x-rays continued to improve.  On Monday an ultrasound showed a small pocket of fluid around the chest tube.  Since the tube was no longer draining, they decided to TPA the line.  I really wish I would have said something.  I remember thinking; if it’s only a small pocket couldn’t we just leave it alone.  But I didn’t question, so they TPAd the line.

Her x-ray after this showed a very wet chest.  It seems that the TPA broke up more pockets of fluid than they expected releasing a lot more fluid into her chest.  The chest tube drained a bit initially but soon stopped draining again.  Daphne still seemed ok despite all of this, but she did spike a fever for a bit.  Cultures were taken, but so far everything has come back negative.  It seems the fever may have just been her body having an inflammatory response to all the fluid in her chest. 

Wednesday evening Daphne’s chest tube just came out all by itself!  They are just watching her breathing closely now.  Despite her chest x-rays not looking great she continues to do well weaning off the C-PAP.  In fact, tomorrow they plan on having her on high-flow room air during the day and only doing C-PAP at night. 

Other good things are that they can now wean her off her pain medication more quickly now that the chest tube is out.  Also, right now she is not on any IV medications!  She has a broviac, but it is only being used to draw her blood work from.  We are still trying to feed her rice cereal.  She is not a fan yet, but she doesn’t seem as annoyed by it anymore.  We also took her out for a short walk.  And something new, we tried tummy time with her a couple of times.  She has barely been on her tummy pre-transplant because her tummy was so big.  She was very annoyed at tummy time, but we will continue to work on it. 

I’ll end with some pictures from this week.