Back from vacation!

Buster and I went on vacation the week of Labor Day (6 weeks after his leg was amputation). This was his first trip to the beach. He had an awesome time! He loved the ocean and laying in the sun and exploring! The house we rented was on stilts and he had no problem going up all the stairs several times a day. Every time we left the house, he was running to the door, ready to go.

I'm still so amazed at how well he's doing. He's so happy and runs around just like nothing ever happened. Several people we met at the beach asked what happened to his leg and after I explained, no one could believe it had only been 6 weeks!

Good news!

I got the best news ever at the vet today! They removed his metal sutures over the weekend and everything seems to be totally healed! The air pocket fixed itself and everything seems great! And here's the best news - HE'S RELEASED FROM DOCTOR'S CARE!! I was so happy to see her write those words on his chart :)

I think I've mentioned several times how fabulous my vet is - well today when I picked Buster up, he was dressed in a little moose outfit/coat that she bought him over the weekend! Isn't that awesome? She is truly the best vet ever. I about made her cry when I was thanking her for everything and telling how grateful I was to have had such a wonder doc to take care of my baby! She actually did tear up a little.

When I picked him up this afternoon they said he had done great over the weekend but had started whining/crying this afternoon and the only way they could get him to stop was to hold him. Apparently he was really missing his momma ;) Poor little guy - I bet he's so puzzled by what all has been going on and how often he's been at the vet's lately.

I'm so happy that it's finally healed! It's hard to believe that he had stitches/staples/sutures for almost 4 weeks! It's amazing how well he's done with all this.

Pics - incision & metal sutures (not cutesy pics)

I wanted to post some pictures just to give an idea of the size of the incision (without being too graphic - the area is not very pretty right now). Everyone (including me) has been surprised at the size of the incision. They remove the shoulder joint too so I guess that's part of the reason for the long incision. Also including some pics of metal sutures since I was totally shocked by their appearance.

This picture gives you an idea what the metal sutures look like. See the metal pieces sticking out? Each stitch has two metal ends sticking out. Oddly enough, they don't seem to bother him. They have scratched his neck some where they're rubbing when he curls up. He has about 6 inches (??) of these although the original incision was several inches longer.

He's standing on the "step" I made to help him on/off the couch. Apparently it seemed like a good place to eat :)

The 2 pics below give you an idea of how long the incision is. It goes from the top of his shoulder/back to up under where his leg used to be and down onto his chest. It's a lot longer than I had expected. The original incision is a few inches longer than the part that is now metal sutured (part of it had healed but most of it had to be reopened and metal sutured).


















Ignore the demon eyes :)

These are not flattering pictures at all but they give a good indication of the size of the incision and what the metal sutures are like.

He's such a little fighter!!

I'll be so glad when he's off all these meds!! And I know he will be too!

He started off on 5 meds some of which were 2-3 times a day. At first, it was fairly easy to give him the liquid meds (I eventually requested all liquids for this reason). Now he's down to 4 meds (2 of the original ones and 2 additional antibiotics)...so it's a pill and a liquid in the morning and then 3 liquids at night. He's fighting me like crazy now! It's amazing how much he can fight to be so tiny!!

Check up today - so far, so good

We went to the vet this afternoon for a check up. She said everything looks good. There's a little area that she wishes was a little different - there's some air under the skin - result of the empty space in there. She's not too surprised by it and isn't terribly concerned over...hopefully it will fix itself in time. Based on everything that's happened, she said she's happy with how it looks and how he's doing. She said we're not "out of the woods yet"...last time it took a week before we knew there was a problem with it healing and we're only at 4 days right now...but so far, so good! As long as it continues to look good, she doesn't need to see him again until Monday to take the sutures out.

He's acting so much more like his old self! I can't believe how good he's moving around. He's adjusting so well. He's finally back to eating his regular food too. He got up on the couch all by himself tonight. He even met me at the door over the weekend, wagging his tail!

Update

I picked Buster up from the vet yesterday after work. I wasn't prepared for what the metal sutures would look like. I assumed it would be similar to regular stitches (start at one end of the incision and then kinda sewn through to the other end)...but each of the metal stitches is tied off so there are metal ends sticking out from EACH stitch and the incision is pretty long so that's a lot of ends sticking out. Once I touched the metal ends, I felt a little better about it. They looked like they would be really stiff but they're softer than they appear. Still not what I expected though. And there's a small open area to encourage draining. I don't deal well with looking at regular stitches so this is taking some getting used to. They would prefer I don't put a shirt on him to allow the area to breathe, plus the shirt might get stuck to the metal pieces. The vet also put him on a additional antibiotic. He's now off the muscle relaxer (last dose was the morning of 7/30) and he seems to be doing well without that.

I'm very impressed with how he's doing walking! I think he made a lot of progress over the past week...it just wasn't apparent because he was so bandaged up that he didn't feel like walking. He is walking SO much better now! His appetite was the best last night that it's been since his surgery. And he was quite a fighter last night when it was medicine time - he seems to really be getting his energy back! He also got up on the couch this morning. That's the first time he's done that in a week and a half (and that time he was heavily medicated from the pain patch). He seems to have learned to use the little step I set up to help him up and down from the couch. I'm hoping he does well today while I'm at work. I'm worried about him messing with the area or the stitches. He seems to be doing ok for now though. I hate to put that e-collar on him if I don't need to.

Incision closed again and crossing our fingers!

I dropped Buster off at the vet at 7 this morning, then stopped to take care of something on the way to work. When I was pulling into the parking lot at work, the vet called me. She was already done! She said when she got in there ,there wasn’t much more dead tissue but she removed everything she saw and got down to some good healthy looking tissue. She also cleaned up the edges of the incision (to make a fresh edge). She felt comfortable with closing him up! YAY!! He doesn’t have a drain but they left a small opening at the bottom of the incision to encourage drainage (I’ll need to apply warm compresses to that to keep it open). She closed him up with metal sutures (apparently out of all the ways to close a wound, that’s the least likely for your body to have an adverse reaction to). She’s also going to put him on an additional antibiotic just to be on the safe side. She said for what it is, she’s very happy with how it looked. So now we’ve just got to wait and see what happens. It might heal up or they may need to open it again and go back in. Just hard to say at this point. From what I understand, this is somewhat rare. She consulted with one of the specialists at CVS about this yesterday also (actually the same doctor I saw when I went there prior to deciding to have his leg removed). She said the part that’s a little concerning as that due to all this, there’s a little bit of empty space in his body under the incision…so that may or may not cause a problem but there’s not really anything they can do about that. So I should get to pick him up after work today and assuming all goes well, he won’t need to go back till Monday.