Drain, Drain, go away . . .

Hi Donna, you poor thing I can really sympathise with you!  This is probably not what you want to hear, but my drain ended up staying in over 8 weeks.  It drove me crazy!  I ended up having to start my chemo with it cos it just wouldnt stop.  After being in so long the stitches holding it broke, and it started slowly sliding out.  I had a hissy fit one morning before going to chemo and pulled it the rest of the way out (pretty silly really, and I certainly am not recommending this!) and slapping a sanitary pad over the hole before fronting up for chemo.  It drained into pads for a day or so and then of course the hole closed over.  THEN my breast started to swell.  It was like a bowling ball after a couple of days.  My surgeon decided to give it a week and see what would happen, but told me he thought I would have to have another surgery and a larger drain put in.  You can imagine how happy I was about that!  Anyway my boob kept getting bigger and bigger, and then literally on the eve of having to go back and see my surgeon it started to go down.  I was VERY lucky, didnt need the extra surgery or another drain.  My breast has never gone down completely, I ended up doing physio and having treatment  for breast lymphodema, but that's another story.

I truly hope you 'dry up' soon.  One theory on why mine was so bad was that I had 33 nodes removed (I had a positive one so the whole lot had to come out).  Hopefully yours will not be so bad.  The up side is that if you can get through the drain strain, you can get through anything.  I honestly believe that bloody drain gave me more grief than 6 months of chemo.  You will get through it, sometimes now when I look back it all seems like a bit of a bad dream.  I'm feeling pretty good these days, not as perky and energetic as I used to, but not sure if i should blame cancer or getting older for that!  Probably a combination.  But you've been there before so I guess in one way at least you know what you are in for,  

I sincerely wish you all the best, you will feel like you've won lotto when that bloody thing finally comes out!

Jennyxx

PS.  As for driving, i ended up swapping cars with one of my kids so that I could drive an automatic, I found that much easier as I could mostly manage with the one arm.  Not sure how legal that is though! :)  Oh, and I bought a cheap handbag to hide it in, should have seen the look on the face of airport security when they asked to inspect it one time! Yech.