We had all hoped that Haven’s new medication would dry up her chest drainage.  The plan was to try the regiment for 14 days (Monday will be day 14).  In the cases where the medicine has worked, the fluid gradually decreased over the course of the two weeks until the drainage was very minimal or even stopped all together.  As of this afternoon, Haven has still been putting out a tremendous amount of fluid from her chest.  So, the next attempt to solve the drainage will take place on Monday.

Haven will return to the Operating Room on Monday where they will perform an exploratory thoracoscopy (fancy words for looking around inside the chest cavity).  If they are able to find the exact source of the drainage, they will attempt to stop the source from leaking.  If they are unable to find an exact source and find that the fluid is simply weeping from tissues, then they will perform a pleurodesis.  Pleurodesis is a procedure where the outside of the lung is “roughed up” and the lining of the chest wall is also “roughed up”.  The roughing up creates scare tissue and causes the lung to stick to the chest wall, thus eliminating the space where the fluid was seeping into.  Then since the fluid would have no place to go, ideally, it would remain inside the tissues and vessels like it is supposed to.  This type of procedure is not commonly done in infants that are Haven’s age, but we’ve already tried the alternate options. 

We’re not sure what time Haven will be going to the O.R. on Monday.  As soon as we find out, we’ll let you know.  Hopefully, these procedures will allievate her drainage problems so that we can move on with recovery and going home.  Haven has been stable otherwise and is pretty much back on a more normal sleeping pattern.  So, it’s been fun to be able to spend lots of time with her alert and awake.