Lymphatic Drain issues

LD78

Hello!

On April 16th I had a double mastectomy (right prophylactic, left w/3.5cm tumor) and unfortunately the sentinal node was an invasive metastatic tumor so the surgeon removed a total of 16 lymph nodes. None of the others turned out to be cancerous.

I am now on week seven post mastectomy and still have one of the drains in! It continues to produce a lot of lymph fluid (40-60ml/day). I have been careful to not be too active and not use my left arm but that hasn't worked. They tried schlerotherapy (injecting doxycycline into the drain tube) which was INCREDIBLY painful and then didn't make a difference! There is obviously a big risk of infection the longer this drain is left in, and I had a low grade fever yesterday. They said that taking the drain out right now could result in a seroma and might require a new drain to be put in by interventional radiology. They won't start radiation therapy until this issue is resolved.

I would be interested in hearing from people who experienced this issue and how they handled it, anything they were able to do to reduce the production of fluid so they could get the drain removed, etc.

Thanks and best of luck to all of you!!