Bad News/ Good News

Sorry for the delay in posting!  Here's on update on the last few days:

The rest of Thanksgiving was a little bit rough.  Landon got his new IV before we moved up to the CPCU but it took 3 tries and a long time to get it, which is never fun.  So we were all pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon.  They put everything but battle armor around it though to make sure we can keep it for as long as possible so hopefully it will stay good for a while.   They also gave him some albumin and immunglobulin by IV so that took several hours to run and we couldn't really go anywhere.

We had a nice dinner for Thanksgiving that was prepared by a church for the Ronald McDonald house.  It was a bit non-traditional since we were trading out to eat in the hospital lounge so somone could stay with Landon but it hit the spot.  I'm determined to make a nice Thanksgiving-esque meal once we get home and Landon is no longer on a low-fat diet.  It might not happen until Christmas but we'll make it happen!

Pretty much since Thursday afternoon Landon's chest drainage has slowed almost to a complete hault.  Yesterday his chest xray showed that fluid was accumulating so it seemed there was fluid that wasn't draining through his chest tube for some reason.  It is particularly important that it drains at this point because if there is fluid in his chest then it prevents the pleuorodesis from really doing its job of adhering the lining of the lung to the chest wall.  They tried a few things yesterday to try to get the fluid moving and pull out any blockages that may be in the tube but they were not effective. 

Yesterday was pretty frustrating for us and both Gary and I were feeling defeated.  Having been here for almost 2 weeks since being readmitted it felt like we're back at square one.  Landon has been more irritable and while we still see his "normal" self some he has a very short fuse right now with the medical staff.  We knew that last night would be a tough night for him to sleep very well since the fluid accumulation can be uncomfortable.  We were given the option of giving him some Ativan (an anti anxiety med) just to help him relax and sleep well so we decided to try it and unfortunately it had the opposite effect of making him wide awake.  So after getting it at 8pm he was up until 1130 which was frustrating for us.  He slept in a little bit today and had an xray a little bit later so at least he wasn't up super early. 
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Update:

We just had rounds and found out that his xray today actually looks better than yesterday's.  Since his chest tube is still draining almost nothing and is pretty worthless at this point, they are going to pull it out but wait on putting in a new one.  Hopefully his xray tomorrow looks better than today's which would be a sign that his body is reaborbin the fluid and that the fluid that is being produced is either going down in quantity or at least not accumulating in the chest.

This is great news since this morning we were planning on him probably having to get a new chest tube again.  We will still have to wait and see though how things go tomorrow before we can think about going home anytime soon.  Even if the xray looks good tomorrow they will keep him a few more days to make sure he doesn't reaccumulate.

Please pray that his body will reabsorb the fluid and that Landon would continue to take steps in the right direction.