Home again, home again

We made it back home from Houston late last night. Feel so good to be home.

First of all, I must give kudos to my amazing husband who can predict, within a 5-minute window, what time we will pull into our driveway. Not just from Houston (Lord knows we’ve made that trip a zillion times), but from pretty much anywhere. And, while I give him a pretty hard time when he is off by a minute or two, I really do find it quite impressive.

Second, we didn’t find out much…which is good, I guess. By the time we got there, the lump I had under my arm was gone. My shoulder was still cramping like crazy and I was still very tender around my back. I didn’t have a fever. It was hard to decide if we should even be going or not.

They did a blood test to look at my white blood cell count, platelets, etc. I showed to be a little anemic, but everything else looked fine.

They did an ultrasound, but didn’t see any drainable fluid. The radiologist said that sometimes the fluid works its way out on its own. That would explain why I had a lump, then it was gone. Also, my drains were running about 70 mL a day, but jumped up to 102 mL on my worst feeling day, Wednesday. Since then, they have slowly decreased again.

Dr. Gainer examined me and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. By the time I saw her, my worst complaint was the cramping in my shoulder blade. She prescribed muscle relaxers to help calm that down. She also wrote a prescription for physical therapy after my drain is removed, should I need it.

Side note: She was quite impressed with the range of motion I have in my right arm. These surgeries tend to tighten up your muscles – some people even get a “frozen shoulder” and have to do physical therapy to get back to normal. I, apparently, am doing a good job with my stretching and exercises that help get that range of motion back. That was good to hear.

So, who knows what all of the drama was about. All I know is that the muscle relaxers, while making me feel like eating is the last thing I could ever do, have helped the cramping in my shoulder. The pain pills are helping my back.

Hopefully, that was just a blip on the radar and we are moving past it now.

 

7 thoughts on “Home again, home again

  1. I’m just glad it wasn’t much of anything. Yeah, another trip down there, but better safe than sorry. Good to know for sure that it was just a blip on the radar, not another huge bump in the road.

    On another note, I’m quite impressed by Alan’s ability to predict your ETAs too. (You were 15 minutes early last night, but….) 🙂 We may tease him about it, but dang! He’s good!

  2. Sorry you had to make the trip, but so happy it turned out to be for nothing! About time you caught a break… and combined with earlier good news about potentially shortening your treatment, maybe this is the turning point! Woo hoo!

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