More liquid

Today I was back in the hospital.  It’s getting a bit much but it was necessary.  I wanted to talk to my doctor about the liquid in my pleural sac, and he wanted to see whether there was more he could drain to make the Christmas weekend easier on me.

I came with two questions.  Why did this liquid appear in such a large quantity all of a sudden, and how do I make sure this stops?  I didn’t get satisfying answers to these questions.  My doctor said that it’s always a bit of a guess why certain things happen at certain times but he was quite confident that the tumor was at the bottom of it.Maybe it’s got more aggressive, he speculated.  Not something I wanted to hear.

Consequently, there isn’t much to do to stop the accumulation of liquid other than push back against the tumor.  I need an effective therapy.  My doctor proposed to start with the new therapy, a bunch of regorafenib tablets every morning for three weeks, with a one week break after that, this weekend already.  That’s quite a chance of pace from the original schedule of restarting therapy in the new year.  As a side note, the sudden accumulation of liquid between therapies probably shows that the earlier therapies were at least partially effective.  The operation to insert the stent in the bile duct was a red herring.  It had nothing to do with it.

By ultrasound, the doctor saw that the liquid behind the lung was high again.  I could have told him that.  My lung feels only halfway there.  I get out of breath at the least exercise, and I cannot move with energy.  The doctor decided to drain my lung again.  This was curious.  So far, I’ve only seen my oncologist behind his desk and during quick examinations.  We’ve discussed my disease, my therapy options and possible alternatives.  He’s been a consulting physician.  Now he would morph into a treating physician.  Fifteen minutes later it happened.

He did everything the same as the doctor two days earlier.  I made sure of that, asking about disinfection and generally being the armchair physician that every real doctor hates.  I have to say I was a bit unsure about this desk jockey operating on me even though it was a simple procedure.  But he did a good job.  I felt no pain.  He dained a liter and a half.  All the while, I could clearly tell that there was something stuck in my back – not a very nice feeling.

When he was done, he asked me to rest a bit, just like the doctor two days earlier had done.  There seem to be procedures in place for such things.  This time I had to wait for half an hour only.  Then I went to get a chest X-ray to make sure the doctor hadn’t punctured my lung.  All looked good.  I picked up my prescription and was off for Christmas, stopping at the grocery store for one last present for Flucha.  Merry Christmas!