The dish so far

Hey guys,

This is Tim sending out an update for Sara on Wednesday night. Some of you are fully up to date, and for other's this is the first you've heard of what's going on. So here's the deal:

Sara started feeling some pains in her central abdomen on Saturday (6/5) morning. It progressively got worse throughout the day. We hoped it'd get better with sleep, but she woke up with some more pains Sunday morning. We were in Iowa visiting Sara's family and decided we better get going to get home in case we needed to hospitalize her.

When we arrived home, we went immediately to the ER at Condell in Libertyville. The last hour of the trip was pretty rough. They ran some tests (Chest X-ray and ultrasound). They decided to admit Sara because of some fluid they found on the X-ray.

She stayed the night for observation. They initially thought it was Pneumonia. This is because she had a lot of fluid in and around her lungs. Monday morning she got a chest CT Scan and an EKG (The heart is doing great!! No problems their. Praise God!!) Then they removed about 1.5L of fluid from around her lungs. This allowed Sara to breathe much easier. She was experiencing some shortness of breathe starting Sunday morning. So this was a great relief afterwards. A bit of a pain going through it for her, and lots of needles. (Needless to say, I think Sara's fear of needles is much lower now :)

They've taken Pneumonia off the table, and think it is something with her lymph glands or system. They think there is a tear on one of her lymphatic vessels that move lymphs around her body. (Please excuse my poor medical knowledge if any of this is not proper medical terminology.)

Tuesday was a much rougher day for Sara :( . The pain meds made her very nauseous and so she was in quite a bit of agony all day. The fluid filled around her lungs again and made it impossible for her to lay back on the bed and get rest. Her only position that allowed her to breate was sitting upright. This was great for breathing, but unfortunately it didn't do much to eliminate her nausea. And also, she couldn't sleep sitting up. Eventually she had an abdominal CT Scan. Which, unfortunately the fluid she drank for that procedure caused more nausea. When that test was complete, the doctor drained her fluids again, and made it much easier to breathe. She was able to get a full night's rest (the first one in quite a few days). Once again, Praise God!!

Also, one great bit of news that we received was the they've basically eliminated Lymphoma from the diagnosis. It was a little bit of a scare earlier that they thought it could be that. Once they have a final diagnosis, they will eliminate this from the list, but basically they are 99% confident this isn't the problem.

Today was a much better day for Sara. She had lots of visitors, which made her feel a whole lot better :). I talked with her in the morning, and she had a perky voice about her. Always a good sign. 3 doctors came in today to talk with her. They've laid out a few options for us, but we have one more test in the morning that'll scope her stomach area. Once that is complete, we should have an action plan for treatment. The best option, if it works, will be to limit her to a no fat diet for about 3 weeks to hopefully clear out and let the body repair the tear in her tubes. We're hoping for this one, as it is probably the best one without doing surgery.