Dr. Dunn is back :-)

I always feel so much better when I see her. She was just down in Brazil at some brainiac convention so I have missed her!

She used lots of medical sounding smart person words, but basically she thinks that I'm having a reaction to my tube food. It is too hard for my body to digest, so it creates fluid called chyle (not Kyle! But pronounced the same way!) ;-) All that extra fluid in my abdomen then accumulates around my lungs. She said that I have 2 liters of extra fluid in my left lung! No wonder I can't breathe!!! The path forward is that first, they will take a sample of the fluid from the drain in my back to confirm that the fluid is indeed chyle. That would be good, because it means no infection. From there, they will go in with the dreaded drain, but will not leave it in - just a one time shot. (Except I bet it's gonna take forever because they use a tiny little tube for the lung drain, and have to use that to drain out the entire 2 liters of fluid. Yup, gonna be a loooong day on that one!)  They would also switch out my current drain for a smaller tube since the big one has been irritating me. They're also going to gradually switch me to a different formula that is already pre-digested (yes, I have gotten THAT lazy!)  Hopefully that will help my symptoms so I can breathe again AND identify the cause by switching formula.

So, that's where I stand right now. They already sent the fluid sample to the lab and don't expect to get the results until tomorrow. (I think they try to grow a culture as part of it.) So maybe tomorrow they will try the drain. I'm not sure how quickly after that happens that you're allowed to go home. We shall see...  At least Dr. Dunn is back, and Bridget and Brooke are my nurses here. They are the bestest nurses in the whole wide world! :-)

***UPDATE***
One of the drs just came in and gave us an update. The fluid in my drain is indeed chyle. So, they are going to start me on a new (nonfat!) formula overnight. The old formula was 50 ccs/hr; the new formula is given at 75 ccs/hr. They have very different nutritional properties, so they have to put me on an insulin drip until the transition is made. They will do all this overnight, with finger sticks to test my blood glucose every hour, ugh. Then I am having a thoracentesis (lung drain) tomorrow at some point. The Dr said that if everything is ideal and goes perfectly, I *might* get to leave on Wednesday, ugh. Both mom and I felt like she was kind of holding something back, and that she doesn't think it will really be Wed. I said we'll take it one day at a time and deal with anything that comes up as it comes up, otherwise it will drive us crazy!

I needed a new IV for all this, so they called the vascular team to come over with the ultrasound machine. Well, the first lady looked for quite a while, but couldn't find any veins. With an ultrasound machine! So she had to call someone else to come up and he spent over 1/2 hr to find any veins. I guess they are just done! I'm certainly sick of all of this too!!!