Originally Posted by hollyjohnson71

So I'm a week out from surgery and have a massive pleural effusion. I went back to ER today with worsening pain/breathing, and the effusion had become even larger. Surgeon here decided to admit me, take me to OR, and put in chest tube. What he found in OR surprised him. He pulled out over 2 liters of chyle (fatty lymph fluid). Apparantly lymph vein was cut during rib resection, which is easy to do since they are virtually invisible and there are hundreds of them. So that lymph fluid had just been draining into chest cavity. Treatment right now is feed me intravenously only, shots that dry up lymph, and hope it heals itself. Chest tube stays in and I'll be in hospital for at least a week. If that doesn't work, have to open me up close to rib resect scar and find and repair leaky vein.

Oh joy! But you know what, my TOS symptoms are still completely gone...I'll take this setback all day long to have the TOS gone. I just know it's going to heal and all will be good!