I found it painless. I had a brilliant team who explained every step as they went. You sit up, leaning forward, I had a couple of pillows on a table in front of me to make myself comfortable. The team used an Ultrasound machine to identify the exact spot to insert the drain. Your given a local anaesthetic into the skin and a fine tube is inserted into the space and fluid starts draining.
I had a litre drained and at this point I did feel I wanted to cough which is apparently an indication to stop. It really was painless.
Did you make the decision to have it drained or your medical team?
my hubby’s observation are ok but he is struggling with breathing and has a terrible cough and hospital said they don’t usually drain unless it is starting to effect his obs are is getting too uncomfortable.
he doesn’t know what to do? Whether to ask them to drain it or just try and live with it?
do they check prior to draining if fluid is malignant or benign?
does it make a difference in hospital decision if it turns out to be malignant or if it needs draining it needs draining regardless?
Sorry I didn’t get an alert that you had replied. Its a sort of joint decision, in my case it was to find out if it was infected as I kept getting a spike temperature and everything else was clear. I didn’t have a cough. They test it for everything, once they have a sample......I still have a small effusion but it hasn’t changed in the past 6 weeks, they check by X-ray. The key think is if your coughing or become breathless it needs draining
Like you get he still has some fluid left in there, they are planning to put a permanent drain in so nurses can drain it weekly.
He is feeling so much better already with his breathing and the cough has eased so much too. He is catching up on some quality sleep as he hasn’t had a decent sleep in weeks with the cough.
When we got to hospital yesterday, the doctor could not hear detect any fluid with ultra sound and thought it was cancer progression as it seemed to be a solid on x Ray in his opinion. But he was very thorough and asked took my husband with him to radiologist for a repeat ultra sound, radiologist pin pointed where fluid was, it was so dense that it was looking like a solid mass on x Ray.
we are so grateful to my husbands medical team, they are really marvellous. We can relax a little now and now have a plan for a permanent drain.
So pleased they have found a solution for your husband. It seems 800/900 is the point where it impacts on your breathing. Hope he finds a comfy position to sleep x
