Drains

[Tallulah55]

I am about to face yet another drain, my fifth.

The last two weren’t straightforward and were painful. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of drains at home as I am very anxious now about the whole situation.

[Morini]

No experience, but it would have been the next step for me had chemo not dried up my ascites. An experienced nurse who I had a great faith in suggested it and said that once fitted, a one or twice weekly drain would be relatively simple, keep me far more comfortable and be a lot less invasive of my time and life because the fluid would be drained in comparatively a lot smaller amounts.

Why is your drains causing issues? I had one painful one where I had to ask for more local anaesthetic. Are they draining slowly enough, my trusted nurse was always telling others to drain slowly with lots of rests to keep me feeling well and this worked. Also no more than 6 ltr without a Dr checking me, no more than 8ltr (which took most of a day) without an overnight stay.

Hope you get this sorted xx

[Tallulah55 in reply to Morini]

two went wrong during the process of putting the drain in which was painful and stressful. One also went wrong as they tried to remove it.

I can’t have anything fitted as you suggest (a doctor also suggested this) as it would be in the way of my upcoming surgery. At my last drain doctors could see some fluid had drained down to the fact I’d recently started on water tablets so I wonder if increasing those would help?

[Marie101]

I'm on my 20th drain and my consultant is reluctant for a permanent drain to be fitted. I go approximately every 3 weeks to be drained. I've just started another type of chemo which they are hoping will dry up the ascites. I've only had pain with a couple of the drains when the local anaesthetic wore off and asked for paracetamol.

I hope your next drain is pain free xx

[JustKBO]

What sort of drain? The gastro? I sympathise. I think you are very brave but you can do this. You’ve been there before. I don’t know why they can’t give a squirt of deadening spray up the nose first. Sorry no experience of this at home. Good Luck.