pupdate: diego progress report




Diego seems to be doing all right. He's able to hobble around on three legs pretty well. The incision looks good, and so far he's leaving it alone, so we don't have to make him even more uncomfortable by putting a giant cone around his giant head.

I say he seems to be all right because he's so quiet and sad. He can stand on three legs to eat his food, and he hobbles around the yard on-leash, but getting from standing up to lying down is a nightmare. It can take him 30 or 45 minutes to figure out how to lie down, or perhaps to get up the courage to try, because it's clearly painful. When he finally exhausts himself standing, he lies down with obvious difficulty.

He's got two patches of pain meds on one side of his body, and we have extra pain meds along with antiobiotics that we're giving him around the clock. But I'm not sure it's enough.

The vet sent us home with instructions for physio. The program should begin with "1, quit job"! There is no way working people have time to do all of it. It's all good stuff -- cold compresses, massage, passive range of motion exercises, short controlled walks -- but the program is totally unrealistic. We also have to find time to get Kai to the beach or a ball field for some exercise.

We are incredibly fortunate to be able to give Diego this surgery, and I fully recognize my privilege in doing so. But I cannot stand to see one of my dogs in pain. It is the worst thing in the world to me. I don't know how parents of critically ill children do it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

not so fast

Not everyone thinks the Conservative government is a lock. Canada's opposition Conservative Party, which is set to bring down the minority Liberal government later this week, was hit by a new opinion poll on Monday that showed it was trailing in the country's most vote-rich region. The Leger Marketing poll for the Sun chain of newspapers put support for the Liberals in the powerful central province of Ontario at 43 percent compared with 31 percent for the Conservatives. Ontario, a Liberal stronghold at the federal level for the past 12 years, accounts for 106 of the 308 seats in House of Commons, and no party can hope to form a government without doing well there. . . . Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals have been badly hurt by a corruption scandal and Conservative leader Stephen Harper says the government must be defeated as soon as possible. The Leger figures, however, suggest there is no guarantee Harper can end 12 years of Liberal rule. Thanks, ALPF! I must say, I...
Read more

dipstick

So there won't be an election yet. Talk about a squeaker . Feel free to tell us how you feel about this, unless it's all been said already, then feel free not to. ALPF mustered his courage and sent more links, so I have some good commentary to post. I found this Macleans story on the Conservative party's reaction to Stronach's decision - and public reaction to that reaction - very interesting. Canadians seem almost universally turned off by the name-calling and sexist slurs. On the other hand, when a certain governor made his "girly men" pronouncement, his constituency howled with glee. (Which is not to say the rest of us weren't appalled.) The Macleans article also notes that not all the sexism came from politicians: Some of the most sexist characterizations of Stronach didn't come from her political adversaries, but from media. Montreal's La Presse newspaper ran a cartoon of Martin leaning out his car window to solicit a street-walking Stronach...
Read more