An Extended Hospital Stay with Breathing Issues
Jason here, providing an update on Lindsey...
We've unfortunately had a rough week and a half. During the week of Thanksgiving, Lindsey's ability to breathe started progressively worsening on a daily basis. From her scan six weeks ago, we knew two small collections of fluid around her lungs (pleural effusions) were noted and suspected that more fluid had started collecting. (She had a similar breathing issue two years ago and the cause was an effusion around one of her lungs. And, that was alleviated by draining the fluid through a simple outpatient procedure). We were out of town for Thanksgiving and were trying to get through the long weekend and back to Greenville until we went to a doctor but, on Thanksgiving day we decided we needed to seek medical attention as breathing had become too much of an issue for Lindsey.
So, Thanksgiving day we went to the ER with reported breathing issues hoping they'd conclude that Lindsey's issue was just fluid, drain it, and send us on our way. Well, it wasn't that straightforward. Lindsey ended up spending two nights in the hospital (Thursday and Friday nights), was treated for pneumonia and eventually had the fluid drained Saturday. She was discharged and encouraged to follow up with our primary care team back in Greenville. She had a CT while in the hospital and we knew from that result that there were indeed two pleural effusions, the right bigger than the left. She had the larger one (right side) drained last Saturday and we planned to go through our care team and have the left side scheduled for draining this week. (They drained 1 liter from around her right lung last Saturday).
Lindsey did feel better after having the fluid drained last Saturday but, unfortunately, her relief was short lived and her breathing did not improve in the following days. In fact, her breathing has continued to slightly worsen each day this week. To make a long story short, Lindsey was admitted to the hospital Tuesday night and has been in the hospital since then. On X-ray, Lindsey's lungs show opacities or infiltrate throughout her lungs. It looks like a pneumonia. She's been worked up for an infection and had blood cultures taken and doctors are pretty sure now that what they see is not an infection or pneumonia. They think the likely observed problem is called pneumonitis, or an inflammation of the lungs. Pneumonitis can occur as a long-term side effect to chemotherapies or other therapies for cancer treatment. The doctors think that what Lindsey has been experiencing is probably pneumonitis and they've initiated a course of steroids to lessen the inflammation and provide her relief.
She had steroids initiated Thursday after an investigative biopsy and samples collected from her lungs Thursday morning. She also had 1 liter of fluid drained from around her left lung. We hoped she would have felt more relief by now but it can take days for the inflammation to go down.
So, for now, she remains in the hospital struggling to breathe, unable to exert herself much at all without getting winded. Just talking and walking to and from the in-room bathroom are enough to make her breathless and need to collect herself. Would you pray that her breathing would improve? If/when it improves enough for her to regain some of her vigor, and preferably without oxygen, they'll let her return home.
Linds is exhausted from this new turn of events and been scared a lot. At times, she feels like she's suffocating or can't catch her breath and it's terrifying. Essentially, she has two issues in play: fluid AROUND her lungs, and inflammation or infiltrate IN her lungs. We initially thought the issue was just fluid around her lungs preventing them from expanding and that with a quick drain, she'd breathe well again. It turns out that having inflamed lungs is much more problematic. Pray that her lungs would be able to function better again soon.
