I know, I know, you guys are tired of hearing about my dog, but Nancy and I were amazed at how quickly she’s healed. Here is a side by side comparision of her from the day we brought her home and 6 days later:
 Belle’s Surgery Incision Originally uploaded by rharkness. |
 Belle after 6 days Originally uploaded by rharkness. |
Belle is home!
Actually came home yesterday, August 30th, but she is a handful. That’s why I’ve been lax blogging an update. Despite the fact that she’s home, she still needs constant attention and care.
The doctors warned us that she’ll be coughing alot and that we have to feed her very carefully. What we have to do is make little meatballs out of canned dog food and feed it to her one piece at a time and make sure she completely swallows between meatballs. This is because she kinda has to relearn how to swallow properly. Part of the problem was that the flap of skin that helps control where air and food go was overgrown and part of the breathing problem (in addition to the airway collapsing). So what they had to do was some resculpting of the flesh. This results in the potential that if she doesn’t eat patiently she could accidentally inhale her food. I’m not too worried about her though. I have the same problem. I cannot talk and eat at the same time without nearly choking on whatever I’m eating.
Nancy has been spoiling the heck out her. She hardly lets her walk on her own. I think we are going to have an even worse monster on our hands when the healing is done. We are also supposed to keep her as calm as possible.
This is no easy feat since she doesn’t believe anything is wrong with her. She is always trying to jump up on things or down from things. Also, whenever Nancy leaves the room (or house) and comes back she gets all excited. The funny thing is that when Nancy leaves, she remains very calm with me and just sleeps. Then when she comes home again, she’s excited again. But this also hold true for our other chihuahua, Coco.
The surgeon was telling us that everyone in the ICU was knocking on any piece of wood they could find and would never talk about how well she was healing loud enough for her to hear because they were afraid of a jinx. We were told that she’s ton quite a few surgeries on dogs like this and our dog has healed the fastest she’s ever seen.
So here’s hoping we are through the woods on this one, but Belle is still a candidate for lung infections and infections from the surgery. But she’s our little trooper.
Thanks to all who had our little girl in their thoughts. I’m guessing some good energy was sent her way
Well, 5 o’clock came without word from the animal hospital. Nancy being the concerned parent that she is, decided to call to see what she could find out. I told her to not bother the hospital because the surgeon most likely was still in surgery. We knew that there was at least 4 surgeries scheduled for today.
Nancy got ahold of one of the nurses in the ICU. The surgeon was still in surgery as I suspected. They had several emergency cases come in that extended the surgeon’s day. From what the nurse told Nancy was that Belle was doing fine. She has won over the hearts of the staff and every time someone comes over to her cage to straighten it up, she’s there all smiles and ready to jump in their arms.
That news seemed to help appease Nancy for awhile. The nurse she spoke to said that we should hear something between 6PM and 7PM. Well that came and went and she was getting kinda worried. I told her that either she’s still in surgery, busy calling all the patient’s parents, or decided she’d call tomorrow because it was late. So we decided to go to dinner. We went and got sandwiches and came back.
Around 8PM we heard from the surgeon. She said that she had to implant around 7 prosthetic rings to support her airway. She needed rings that went down to her first ribs on her rib cage. We were informed that her practice was to keep the dogs intubated for 45 minutes after getting out of surgery to make sure there isn’t any potential for paralysis. For that 45 minutes the dog is in the lap of a nurse getting some TLC. We were told that at almost exactly at the 45 minute mark Belle was letting everyone know that she was ready to get that tube out of her throat. Once she was extubated, we were told that if it wasn’t for the swelling you’d never know anything was wrong. Then the surgeon told Nancy that she had to lower her voice so Belle couldn’t hear, but she was absolutely amazed at her progress. She’s progressing faster than she ever expected or has seen and if things keep on this path, she might be home by Wednesday night.
Belle’s next hurdle is going to be eating. She’ll get her first solid food tomorrow. It will be wet dog food (food from a can) rolled up into tiny balls.
That’s all we know at this point and thanks for all of those people that had our little girl in their thoughts
Some people who read my blog have told me that they want to be kept informed about how Belle is doing.
We got up early this morning to take Belle to the surgeon. The paperwork we got told us to be at the hospital between 7:15 AM and 8:00AM. So we took off from the house at 6:40AM. Belle was all confused because her routine was screwed up and she didn’t get any breakfast. Coco was confused because she was baby-gated into the kitchen but Belle wasn’t with her.
Well we hit the highway and just as I feared we ran into traffic. Not just any ole traffic but the kind where you are only moving at 10-20MPH. In an hour we had only travelled what the previous day had only took us 20 minutes. I was stressing. But we eventually got there with 5 minutes to spare
We filled out the necessary paperwork and sat down and waited for someone to come get her. We weren’t there waiting for long. Nancy gave her hugs and kisses and handed Belle over to me. We had to say our necessary goodbyes in case things went badly and this was the last time we saw her alive.
I am usually the cold hearted bastard of the bunch when it comes to feelings so I was taken aback by the fact that I actually felt a little something as I walked away from Belle after she was handed off to the medical personnel.
We didn’t hear anything from the hospital until sometime around noon. The call was from someone in the recovery room. Everything went well. They had just extubated her and she was real quiet.
Now we await a call from the surgeon to find out how successful the surgery was and anything else she needs to tell us. Plus, Belle needs to survive the recovery process.
All I know, if that it feels like something is missing here
As I mentioned in my previous post, our beloved Belle will be having surgery on Monday. The surgeon operates out of a hospital in the Houston. For those familar with Houston, the hospital is tucked away in the Galleria area.
When you walk into this animal hospital, you’d swear that you were in a medium sized human hospital. But you realize rather quickly that this isn’t the case. Everywhere you look there are dogs, a few cats, and maybe an exotic animal or two.
There are departments just like you’d expect to see in a hospital. There is Oncology, Dermitology, Gastrointronology, Orthopedics, etc. Of course, this hospital also had the requisite waiting areas with all the outdated magazines. The walls were covered with professional portraits of hospital staff with their pets.
They even have canine gurneys. It was kinda funny watching the staff transporting the dogs on these gurneys. They had high sides on them like a child’s crib but no front or back. The dogs, wouldn’t lay down and would try to stand as the gurney moves forward. It’s almost like what I imagine a dog would look like if it was trying to surf.
They even have a fully staffed ICU for their surgical cases and seriously ill. From what we’ve been told, they even prefer to hire RN’s instead of vet techs because their own studies have shown that the recovery rates are higher with RN’s.
I have to say I’m impressed and never believed there was such places in this world. I felt much more comfortable with the idea that our dog will be in their care.
We call her Belle for short. She’s our 7lb fawn colored Chihuahua. We found out early in her life that she had problems with breathing. SHe would cough alot. Our first vet just wrote it off as Kennel Cough, but eventually over time, we found out that it really was a congenital defect called a collapsing trachea.
It’s rather sad to see her. She runs around trying to have a good time like a 4 year old dog would like to but she just starts hacking and coughing. She really sounds like a goose when she gets going. All the neighborhood kids always ask us what is wrong with our dog which Nancy promptly tells them that she has bad asthma. Adults on the otherhand think we are choking the crap out of our dog.
Unfortunately, in the 4 years we’ve had her it has finally gotten to the point where she really doesn’t want to do anything anymore but lay around. Our vet recommended a surgeon who happens to be a pioneer in airway surgeries in small breed dogs. Nancy went to see her last December and found out Belle was a strong surgical candidate. The only problem was that the recovery is long and if anything went wrong, she wouldn’t be able to cope while trying to go to school at the same time. So we have waited.
This summer has been especially hard on Belle, but we finally made it to Nancy’s graduation day so we made an appointment to see the surgeon again.
Belle is scheduled for surgery on Monday. We will not be able to visit Belle after the surgery for anywhere from 3-5 days. Since the surgery involveds her airway, the doctor cannot take any chances of putting undo pressure on her airway so the prescription is boredom. The more bored she is the less stress on the airway and what dog isn’t excited to see their family. So therefore, no family visitation.
This is going to be very stressful for Nancy. Since she is young we are told that Belle’s chances are good, but with any surgery there is risk.
I know she is a dog, but she is like a child of ours. Some people have think we are wierd but we don’t care. I think pets should be given every chance if you have the means to take care of them. To mean that is part of the definition of responsibility
I saw the craziest thing today. My wife and I were sitting on the couch discussing topics for her nursing exam on Monday and she turns to me and says, “Ray, look…Coco’s asleep.” Coco is one of our two Chihuahuas (otherwise known as the fur-kids). I told her that she couldn’t be asleep because her eyes were wide open.
She insisted she was asleep because her body was twitching like she does when she’s asleep. I got down and put my face in front of hers and she didn’t move. I knew at this point she had to be asleep because Coco hates to have someone look her in the eyes and will turn her head away if you put your face into hers.
That’s when I saw the cool yet wierdness. Her eyes were twitching like crazy. First they rapidly moved left and right. Then they’d roll back or roll to the side. The whole time her eyes were going crazy her body was twitching like she was wanting to run somewhere.
I guess what I was seeing was REM not the band, but Rapid Eye Movement. I just never knew anyone besides Beetle Bailey had figured out how to sleep with their eyes open
