I swear dogs have a talent of knowing when it is Sunday, which means our regular vet shuts in the early afternoons.
For the last two sundays Meg has presented herself with complications that I would love to call the vet about, or better yet, bring her into the clinic and have her looked at right away. Because I’m a paranoid furmum of course!
Yesterday we were coming home from a short trip, and I went to get the dogs out of the car. They were’t on leads and given there was a dog across the road that they’d run across to, it seemed easier to carry them from the car to the gate into the apartment complex.
In the time it took to pick Dotti up and give her to Tim (a second or two), Meg decided she was ready to jump out the car like she used to as a quad-dog. She landed it, seemed fine. I was furious at her of course.
That was until I saw a bit of blood where she was laying, and some blood across Dotti’s face (get out of it, Dot!). Flipped Meg over and had a look at the incision – about 2 or 3 centimetres of the wound was bleeding, and almost looked like it had come open. The stitches were still in but it didn’t look good! This of course had to happen right before we were due to arrive at a get together around the corner (with the dogs, of course).
All regular vets were closed and calling the 24hr emergency vets for advice seemed costly, especially if she needed to go in there! The internet isn’t helpful for these things, especially when we weren’t even sure what she’d done to the wound. The wound stopped bleeding and looked to be a bit more stuck together again when I looked at it 5 minutes later. We put the cone back on and reluctantly got on with the evening. I was fearing the entire thing would come open, infections, stitches falling out, all sorts of drama that would result in an expensive trip to the 24hr vets. Luckily none of these things happened (although, I wouldn’t be opposed to her having a course of antibiotics), and Meg happily rested and lapped up attention at our friends get together.
Meg is fine, the incision site looked back to normal by the time we went to bed and again this morning.
Lesson learned though – no more exerting yourself before ‘stitches out Wednesday’, Meg!
I can’t believe it has been over a week since Meg had her surgery!! We’ve had quite a few ups and downs the last few days, but it seems like finally we are on the up again!
End of Day 5
After I posted my last update things took a turn. Meg still wasn’t eating, threw up a few times, had very runny poop and was panting very heavily. A reaction to the rimadyl, the same that she had after her biopsy. Thankfully she calmed down and slept through the night.
Day 6
After a panicked call to the vet, he said Meg would have to go off the rimadyl, we should start giving her anti-acids and if she didn’t start eating she would need to spend the next day at the vets on an IV drip :O Not to mention if the pain was bad from no rimadyl, she would need another fentanyl patch.
Meg seemingly heard all this news, and an hour after her antacid, ate some chicken, and seemed like her lively self. Sore and tired, but herself.
Meg & Dotti hanging out
In the afternoon she threw up again. Here we go again I thought, but it seemingly wasn’t the case. She continued on into the evening resting, chilling, eating dinner and being overall ok.
At about 1:30am I heard her salivating a lot. Oh god, here comes the vom! This went on for an hour, with me constantly waking up to check if she was ok, if she was ready to throw up. Finally, she did a small vomit (in her bed of course). Clean up done, and we all attempted to go back to sleep. Just as I was asleep, I heard her get up and start coughing and spluttering. Another spew, bigger this time, on our lovely fluffy grey rug. Typical dogs – can’t make a mess on easy to clean things.
A pee, a tramadol and some candles later (far out vomit stinks!) we all went back to sleep (well, everyone else did, I tossed and turned for another two hours).
Day 7
Despite the horrible night, I could see Meg was feeling back to her pre surgery self on day 7. Anti-acids down, and she sat in the sun waiting to get on with the day. She went out for a lil walk around the apartment block yard, and she even went down the two sets of stairs by herself for the first time!
She ate dog food for breakfast for the first time since the surgery as well. Accomplishments everywhere.
Meggymoo even decided it was time to get back into eating her beloved rawhide chew sticks and greenies dental sticks. She had her sparkle back. And as usual, was keen to get some sun baking in.
I has to sunbake my stump hooman, how else will it go back to tan like the rest of me?!
That afternoon we even took her to the (again, mostly empty) dog park to enjoy some sun before the weather turned. Dotti ran around while Meg tried to hop and follow, but reluctantly decided to sit and stay in the sun.
She spent the afternoon snoozing. No vomits. No runny poops. Just our standard Meggymoo. She even got some KFC scraps for dinner!
Day four was again up and down, with its own set of complications and accomplishments. Meggmoo, our gooseberry, was not interested in food at all. Breakfast, nope, lunch nope, dinner, hand fed after pleading!!
This made things difficult given the vet said she strictly needs food with her daily rimadyl medication or she’ll be sick. She ended up reluctantly eating one cheese slice. That counts right? She hasn’t been sick anyway!
She ran up the steps, again, much to my horror because she ran faster than she ever has as a quad dog, I was sure she’d slip!
She spent the rest of the day snoozing while I stressed over the fact 1) she wasn’t eating 2) she was /still/ managing to do too much exercise (including trying to jump up onto the couch) and 3) we were quickly approaching day 5 and she still hadn’t pooped yet! Pumpkin, sweet potato & lamb baby food to the rescue!
Day 5
Once again, Meg showed no interest in food. It isn’t uncommon for Meg to not want breakfast, but damn it is irritating when she is recovering! She had a few bites of chicken for breakfast, and another cheese slice with her rimadyl. Once again she seemed pretty worn out and sore – she has been shaking most of the day. It is hard to tell what is her natural chihuahua shake and what is pain.
At around midday, Meg shot up from sleep and raced to the door. This was promising given she hadn’t wee’d since the night before! She did a long wee and then stayed in the garden. I held my breath and she squatted her bum down, trying to balance. And there it was. A long waited for, very orange and smelly poop. Finally! 5 days in the making.
This afternoon we all made the trip to the vets for a check up! Vet says we can lower Meg’s tramadol to see if that improves her appetite, but I pointed out her pain issues and she was just as confused as me with what to do. Back to trial and error! The fentanyl patch and wound bandage came off, all was looking well. Then came the big news – the biopsy results from the lymph node in the cancer leg. The vet started saying there is good news and bad news (oh god!) but it seems mostly good, there were mast cells in the lymph BUT they weren’t cancerous (yet?). The vet wasn’t surprised given the tumour was pretty large and close to the lymph. So reluctantly for now, she is seemingly in the clear, but not out of the woods. Chances are we got all the cancer, but a cell or two could’ve been missed and could’ve spread. For now we sit and we wait for any signs of spread to the organs, or any new lumps for that matter, and then we looking into chemo options.
Honestly, I’ve expected the entire time that her cancer journey wasn’t over, and I’m expecting in the future we’ll face a choice of what to do. For now though, I am just happy that she *might* be cancer free, and can get on with living her happy little Meg life.
She is doing a great job of that this afternoon, running around the house like a lunatic (I think she is happy to be bandage free), we’re struggling to keep her still!
Crazy eyes! Hyperactivity episode underway. How did I end up behind a pillow?!
Settle down Meggymoo, still another 9 days until those stitches come out!
Day three post op has been up and down, but for the most part calm and stress free.
Meg slept through the night and woke up around 7:30 wanting to come up on the bed for a snuggle. Drugged her up with some tramadol and let her nest under the doona cover like she used to as a quad dog.
Things seemed fine, until I offered her breakfast. Not interested at all. I was 95% sure this was because I blended up some of her normal dog food with raw chicken, she has been eating raw chicken by itself for the last few days, but there was a risk that A) she was in too much pain and B) the day 3-5 crash beginning. I’m prepared for that crash but at the same time, I want to keep enjoying a happy Meg for a little longer. I insisted we get her a cheeseburger meat patty for lunch, when she has her rimadyl and needs to eat.
Fortunately it seemed like she was just sulking about dog food and went on enjoying the day. The sun was out and she took up some sun baking.
Sunbaking
We even took her to the (very empty) dog park where she sat on my lap, laid in the grass and even had a little roll in the grass – nothing too strenuous. The happiness on her face was amazing, I think the park on a sunny day is her favourite thing.
The morning was topped off with her eating her cheeseburger lunch and happily getting drugged.
The main highlight from the afternoon was taking her out for a pee break, going to pick her up to take her back to our second level apartment, but nope, she wanted to climb those steps herself! Two sets of at least 10 stairs! The first few were almost slips (I was ready to grab her), but after that she had it nailed! Safe to say she is only doing that once a day for now.
She did a fair bit of running between rooms this afternoon as well, to my horror. I enforced bed rest – she is going to be exhausted tomorrow (she already is).
Her shaking has picked up, and the signs of phantom limb pain episodes, and a hell of a lot more sulkiness and sadness has begun. Here comes the crash.
Hasn’t this been a journey already! Lucky for Meg, it has been a smooth one. Love and gratitude to everyone on tripawds who has been posting on my forum threads, and talking to me in the live chat when I was waiting for news! This blog probably won’t have any new info for you guys though. Seriously though, this site is a blessing.
Surgery day!
Surgery day was stressful and long, as you’d expect. We dropped off Meg at 8:00, and honestly I wasn’t expecting to see her again, I was that sure things would go wrong. I even made my partner Tim be the contact person because I was terrified of the bad news call. I told Tim to only call if there was bad news, and around 1:00, Tim called. My heart sank and I took a deep breath and answered. Tim sounded upset and serious, and that was almost confirmation for me. Nope. Surgery went smoothly and Meg was recovering well. Men – they don’t listen to you and make you stress for no reason! Relevant info – the vets also said they’d only call if there were complications that afternoon, sounds familiar.
Our only other stress for the afternoon was where Meg would be spending the night. The receptionists /vet nurses kept asking what time we’d be picking her up, but the doctors were adamant she’d be staying overnight. I wasn’t keen on her staying alone at the vets overnight, but also the idea of bringing her home didn’t thrill me.
Around 4:00 or 5:00 the vets called. Heart sank, again. I listened intently as Tim spoke to them, but it didn’t seem like any bad news. Opposite actually – Meg was awake, tail wagging, learning to walk and even ate some chicken. She was still on an IV to manage her pain and didn’t cope with them lowering the dosage, so it looked clear she’d need to stay overnight.
We went to see her around 7:15, she looked high as a kite, very sore but happy to see us. We spent about an hour with her as the vets shut up and eventually decided to take her to the 24hr vets for the night. Our vet said he’d send through her history to them. Email never showed up to the 24hr vets AND they said our vets were meant to send over her drugs, therefore we’d have to pay for them. Lucky this turned out to be false. Although it was a stressful 30 minutes at the 24hr vets waiting to check Meg in and get her back on the IV, while wondering why her history never arrived and how we got so misled about the costs of her stay there. Alls well that ends well.
What to heck just happened?!
Post Op Day 1
We collected Meg from the 24hr vets in the morning, and were thrilled to hear she had a good night, and was hopping around in the morning, and even did a lil pee! Dropped her off at the regular vets, our vet was concerned that she seemed a little dehydrated and very high from all the drugs, so she’d need to spend the day there. Understandable and predictable. We would get an update in the afternoon and see if she could come home that night. Around 2:30 we called and the vet said she was good to go that evening.
Home sweet home
We picked her up at 6:15, she seemed very happy and a lot less miserable than the previous times we saw her. She was thrilled to be home, not so thrilled with her cone of shame. She’d bump it into things and fall over. She ate dinner right away, took her drugs and settled down for the evening without too much fuss. We took her to bed around 11:00, and she settled down with only a few whimpers. At 1:30am she woke up crying and banging her cone into the bedroom door. Megquad would’ve held in a pee, or at least gone on a peepad. Not Megpod. Outside we went and she did what she needed to do, while still struggling with the cone. She took about 30 minutes to go back to sleep afterwards, lots of crying and shaking, poor lil girl. She woke up about 3 or 4 more times during the night, gently crying and shaking, luckily she’d fall back to sleep quickly, which resolved the pain issue.
Post Op Day 2
Today seems like a very laid back day! Meg has been asleep all day, aside from eating breakfast. Her pain seems under control and all is well. Hopefully the hospital drugs don’t wear off for another few days. The cone is off, given we are watching her like a hawk and it only seems to be upsetting her, that seems to have helped her a lot. Meanwhile, I am well and truly exhausted already – what do you mean I have uni work to catch up on?! Sleep please!
*Will update with any other day 2 developments as the day goes on!*
Afternoon updates:
The afternoon features a few phantom limb pain attacks, which was pretty startling for us! Poor girl must be in so much pain when it happens, nothing really prepares you for those yelps.
We also made a quick visit to the vets, the bandage over the wound was falling off and got replaced, the vet seemed very pleased at how Meg is progressing, and a little offended she is eating perfectly at home, but didn’t want food at the vets!
We also cut her tramadol from every 8-12 hours, to 6-10 hours, hopefully that keeps her ahead of the pain!
Keep kicking goals Meggymoo, we’re so proud of you!
