I didn't deal with my PCP at all. My wife, the nurse, says that you should deal with the surgeon as long as it's a by-product of surgery. At least cardiac anyway. I realize that's not always possible. Cardiologists are an unusual breed. They take everything pretty serious and I like that.
Your wife is right, if your surgeon is pretty close. We call the cardiologist or surgeon when Justin has post op complications, (which he's had lots of surgeires and a few complications) but if the surgeon is too far to personally check you out when you run into post op complications at home, it different.
I know your cardiologist is out of town, but if she belongs to a group, maybe you should put a call into them and see who is coverring for her.
Michelle, I wonder if part of the reason they didn't suggest draining you right away, was because you had your surgery somewhere else. I know from other boards, sometimes if you have surgery somewhere else, the other hospitals, might try to be a little more conservative and not want to do procedures like drains right away, if they didn't do the surgery.
Justin had a picline placed at a hospital an hour from our home, the day the home nurse tried to pull it out it got stuck. There of course was also a Blizzard so we didn't want to drive an hour away if we could avoid it. We tried a couple closer hospitals, but not one would remove it, since it wasn't their doctors that placed it, they didn't want to accept the reponsibility if it broke off or something happened, So we had to drive to the other state
Hopefully the motrim clears
Justin never had plueral effusions, but has had pericardial after almost every surgery. How they treat him has to do with how much fluid there is, we know the symptoms for justin s get him there pretty quickly his last few surgeries so they were able to help him with just Motrim or motrim and steroids. When he was a toddler, it was 20 years ago, and it took a really long time even with being drained every so many days, for months. BUT they learned alot since they and usually it clears up quicker.