Turning the Corner

The pain team here at MD Anderson were successful in finding the right combinations of drugs that reduced Lauri's pain level while not overly affecting her motor skills. She only had two pain spikes last night, which were handled by the medication. Overall, she got a much better rest last night, at least compared to the last two nights...

The epidural was stopped and capped last night since it was not working effectively. Lauri was instead put only on IV pain medication and oral pain pills and this was effective last night. The epidural line was removed this morning for good.

Great news also came this morning when the Surgery team decided it was time to remove the chest tube. To give you an idea, the chest tube was inserted just below the right side of the rib cage, and runs up inside of the rib cage to just underneath the collarbone area, where the right upper lobe of the lung is located (recall that the right upper lobe is the area the surgeons worked on Thursday). That's about 1 foot of tube inside your ribcage - Lauri is thrilled to have that removed! To remove the chest tube, they simply trim the stitches that hold it in place, and pull it out. It actually feels more "weird" than painful. So they tell me...

Anyway, Lauri is quickly shedding tubes and IV lines, the less leashes the better. We are currently on track for release from the Hospital on Monday. Lauri is taking only oral pain medications now, and we will work with the pain team the rest of today and tonight to converge on the right combination of pills to handle the pain. They have a solution so far that seems to be working. We'll see how it goes the rest of today, and we are looking forward to going home tomorrow!