Ronnie James stayed in the hospital for three more days after I last updated here. We brought him home yesterday, after work.

It was a long weekend of worry and wait. We continued to visit the little guy twice a day, and we called the hospital every four hours to ask about the status of his pleural effusion. The volume of the fluid in his chest did decrease significantly from where it’d been earlier in the week, but hovering around the 8-10 ml range (down from 20-30!), it was still too much to warrant removing his chest tube.

So yesterday afternoon, Ronnie James underwent anesthesia again, and Dr. M. and the radiologist performed a lymphangiography. This procedure allowed Dr. M. to see whether we’d have a shot at the one last surgical option available for chylothorax: cisterna chyli ablation. The study results showed that the surgery would be irrelevant, since the problem was not leakage from the thoracic duct. The thoracic duct ligation surgery had been effective. The fluids were coming from somewhere else, likely from the pleura, as a result of pleural fibrosis. We are out of options.

The good thing about being out of options, though, is that the Wrah-Wrah is now home with us. He’s home, and we’re enjoying him, loving him and spoiling him with attention while we’re waiting for the next thing to happen.

Ronnie James is just the toughest little guy! His spirits are high. He’s happy and active, eating and drinking. But his little body is showing signs of wearing down. For one thing, despite eating well, he’s losing weight. We’ve stopped feeding him the prescribed low-fat diet. We’ve halted attempts to force him to take the loathed rutin. There’s no longer any point to these chylothorax medical management strategies. We’ve more or less entered a hospice phase here at home, and in this phase, we’re going to give him anything and everything he wants.

Dr. M. sent Ronnie James home with us last night so we could spend a good few days with him while he’s happy and alert. Freshly tapped, it will take maybe 48-72 hours for the increasing volume of fluid in his chest to slow him down again. I’m staying home with him today and tomorrow, because it’s out of the question that I’m not here to spend his last few days with him.

On Thursday, we’ll take him back to Dr. M. for an x-ray to see where we are with the fluids. We’ll probably have to make The Decision at that time… for real, this time.

Of course, I’ve got a slew of pics from the weekend.

From Friday:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s me on Saturday wearing my paw earrings just for the Wrah-Wrah:

 

 

On Sunday, many pictures were taken:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on Sunday night, we got to spend an hour with him in a private room.

 

 

 

 

A miracle could still happen, right? A miracle, an inexplicable turn-around, whatever you want to call it… it could still happen. But Ronnie James will tell us. He’ll tell us what he wants to do, and when he wants to do it. Our job is to listen. At the moment, I’m only hearing his happy “I see birdies!!” sounds as he watches the front yard through the living room window, and I’ve never heard anything more precious.