Summary of Hospital Stay

For those of you who missed it and don't want to read a month's worth of posts, this is what happened during Ma's hospital stay.

1. Ma went to the emergency room with shortness of breath on June 1st. Her pleural effusion (fluid in the lung) had returned. She was admitted to the hospital for treatment.
2. The pulmonologist inserted a chest tube to drain her lung and did a pleurodesis to keep the pleural effusion from coming back.
3. Ma's lung collapsed. It was reinflated, but she was sedated and kept on a ventilator in the ICU for several days.
4. The pleurodesis did not work. Her lung kept producting fluid.
5. She was transferred to another hospital for surgery. The surgery was for a video-assisted pleurodesis. It didn't work. She had two large chest tubes draining her lung, and they kept draining a liter a day.
6. The surgeon did the same surgery a second time hoping it would work. It didn't.
7. The large chest tubes were removed and a smaller catheter inserted so that Ma can go home.
   
8. Ma went home on July 4th after 33 days in the hospital. Pa has to drain her chest through the catheter every day.
9. The consensus is that the fluid build-up is caused by the breast cancer, and the doctors hope that chemotherapy will make the pleural effusion stop.
10. Ma resumes her chemo tomorrow.