The Drain….

This little drain has become a story all on its own. During the surgery, they added in a drain that helped drain the fluid from the incision area. When I first heard I would be going home with this drain, I was not excited to have this little bottle attached to my leg. First I would have to empty it and record the amount of fluid and then how does it come out.

Well, emptying was not bad and within a few days the output was pretty minimal. This past weekend, it really had stopped with any output. So now the step was how does this come out. I went back to the discharge papers from the surgeon and he indicated “the drain can be pulled by your general doctor at your clinic or the urgent care center”.  The first thought of waiting in the Urgent Care for 2-3 hours to have this done did not seem like how I wanted to spend my first time away from home. So first I confirmed with the surgeon that I should actually contact me regular doctor to have this done. He confirmed that was what I should do and the discharge papers would fill in as the “order” to have this done.

So off I go to call my GP office, who also happens to be a Dr. Chen, to get this process moving forward. Of course, Chen was out of the office, but another doctor would expedite the order to have this done. Next day, I got a call from Chen’s nurse that the order was in and I could request to have the drain pulled. Geez….I guess I was thinking Chen’s office would do this. So here I am, orders in hand and no idea where to go with them! Seems someone had mentioned Wound Care, so I checked out this speciality at Park Nicollet. Looking at their web site, I did see that they do offer Wound Care at home, which seemed like a fantastic option that we would not have to try to go into a clinic.

Talked to a very nice person at the Wound Clinic…and yes, they do provide at home service, but not in our area of the Twin Cities!! She provided the name of two options of other services that would provide that. So then I thought I better call the insurance company and see if they would cover this. Although, to be honest I was at the point that I would just pay for someone to come here and pull the drain and just pay it all out of pocket!!

Blue Cross, Blue Shield was helpful and really abide by the Medicare guidelines which indicated that I would need to be officially home bound in order to qualify from the home services. I am beginning to feel like I am going in circles! LOL

Ok, so now back to the Wound Clinic at Park Nicollet. Talked to a very nice person there, and it was their determination that they would not pull the drain since they were not the ones that put it in!! She seemed a little surprised that GP Chen had referred it out and had not been willing to do it, so that added to their decision not to pull it.

Ok, now I am about ready to tie a sting to a door knob, attach it to the drain plug and slam the door so the drain comes out. Back I go to Mayo Clinic and the surgeon’s office. Left a message with their nurse just asking where in Mayo would I go to have this pulled. About 10 minutes later, the NP at the surgeon’s office said she could pull it and had an appointment at noon on Friday. So now I had to prepare mentally for a 4 hour car round trip to get this crazy thing pulled!!! 

Now time to prepare to make this little road trip!!! We have not been out of the house at all in 2 weeks and we have those 2 little steps to conquer to get out to the car. Asked Jason to come over just to help with this first time and watched some videos on how to use the walker to get up and down stairs.

In the meantime, I thought I would leave a message with Shelby, Dr. Chen’s (oncologist) nurse about this and would there be any magic that she could work so we did not have to drive to Mayo for this little task. She called me back within the half hour and said she and Chen will pull the drain, plus it would give Chen the chance to check in with me and talk about plans moving forward with this little pesky lymph nodes!!! YEA!!! Shelby is AMAZING!!

So now this little troublesome drain has come back around and we can do it locally!! Really what I wanted from the very beginning! It will be a two-for in that I will get to have that appointment with Chen at the same time. We will go today at 2 and get this all done!! It will be good to get Chen’s insight on the next steps and if there is concern or hopefully the nodes were just excited to have Ted the Tumor around and now that he has left the building, the nodes will calm themselves down. :-). One can hope!

What started out as what seemed a simple request….pull the drain…became a couple days of phone calls and frustrations, but the end result was being able to touch base with Chen and get her insights into all of this!!

Next steps will also be Physical Therapy and how I conquer that!!

Have a great day….and smile at a stranger.