Drainage/Seroma problems

katiekabooom

Ladies, do you find that those of us who opt for no reconstruction have greater issues with seromas because there is more 'empty space' for the body to understand?

I am on drain #11, left the hospital with 4 but since then have had them inserted, pulled, inserted, pulled again and again.  The biggest challenge seems to be the drain works well for 2 days or so, then the seroma gets loculated and nothing flows.... it just builds up in my ex-breast area.  So far, i've had a 300cc aspirated once, and 600cc aspirated once.  Prob will have another 400 pulled again on Monday. 

wtf is going on!?? any tips on how to deal?  these issues with my drains are delaying my chemo.... can't decide if that is a blessing in disguise.

RhodyMMM

Are you milking the drains? Did they tell you to do that? It helps to move the sediment through and keep things flowing. I am on my second drain...had surgery 6/12; the drains came out almost three weeks later. One was ready, the other was no longer functioning so they pulled it. Two days later they aspirated 300cc, then 500 cc two more days later. Then the new drain was put in three days later and they got 500cc at that time. Drain has been in now for 5 days, averaging 100-125 cc per day continuously.

Did you have axillary node dissection? My BS told me that when they take the axillary nodes there is more fluid production because the body's immune system kicks into high gear trying to understand and compensate for the lack of lymph nodes. I had 16 nodes removed from the side where I am having trouble with drainagee (I also had a second surgery on that side due to complications.....although the BS says that is irrelevant)

chrissyb

Katie if memory serves me right, I had my drains removed while I was still producing more than 200cc per day so had to go to my docs office every two or three days to have the liquid drawn off by syringe. Then amounts varied draw to draw but mostly in declining ccs. This went in for nearly four weeks before the doc was happy that I was producing less than 50ccs for the three day period and left my body to do the management.



Basically it's just a time thing and how much of a serum response your body creates to deal with the injury and does resolve when the healing proper begins. Don't worry about the delay for your chemo as your doc will not let you go past the optimum time for treatment.



Love n hugs. Chrissy

katiekabooom

Rhody i was milking. but when there is NO fluid flowing, milking doesn't help as there's clearly a clog in there someplace.  Weirdly, the issue side is the left side, which had no auxilliary node dissection because it was a prophylactic mastectomy on that side.  so in theory, it should have been the easier side.

my surgery was May 28th so i'm kinda getting sick of this

katiekabooom

four weeks of going in to get drained?  Chrissy, you are a rock star. Why did they take the drains out so soon aka when they were still drawing so much fluid?

Mardibra

I had the same issue....produced a lot of fluid for over a month.  Went into surgeons office at least 2x/week.  After a while they were no longer able to draw fluid even though we knew it was in there.  So, I had to "wrap" myself with ace bandages for a few weeks and that seemed to help.  All of a sudden...no more fluid.  I remember my first drain being 12 ounces!  All I could think of was I had an entire can of diet coke under my arm/former breast!

chrissyb

Katie, I was released from hospital two days before Christmas and my specialist was going on his annual break that day but he didn't want me to go home with the drains........they had already been in for seven days. I was under the care of his resident while he was away and when I saw my specialist again at the end of January he was surprised at how much fluid I had produced.



I think also that it would have been harder to get help should I have problems with the drains because of the holidays. Really though, I thought it wasn't too bad as I just had to ring the Resident and tell him that I needed to be drained and he would do it in the specialist rooms. It took about two minutes to do and was not painful as the whole area was still numb from the surgery nerve damage.



The whole seroma thing is purely your bodies defence response to injury........it produces this fluid in order to try to keep the injury clean while it heals.

grammaB

This is day 12 post surgery for me and my bs has had me bound in an ace bandage and now a surgical binder every moment since surgery except for my shower time.  I had my 4 drains out at day 9 post, they had hardly produced anything for 2 days.  I woke this morning with some seepage from the incision scars, not sure whether I cinched my self too tight or too loose yesterday after shower.  Still a bit of fluid there it seems.

I can't wait to be free of the binding, but if it is keeping me from these drainage issues, I guess I'll go with the flow till she says I can take it off for good!! 

Solnitsa

GrammaB, I think the longer you stay bound the better off you are.  I had one drain removed way too soon because the other two fell out.  I had to go in once to get drained and now I have hard areas on that side that are really uncomfortable.  I think they just need to let my body absorb whatever it is. Good luck!