With home being 3 hours behind in time it was a long wait for new news. But , I know that middle of the night phone calls are never a good sign … so no news is good news.
Imagine my surprise and tears of joy when I received a video from the resident of Grover taking his “first hops” outside. ALL OF THIS WAS JUST 12 HOURS AFTER SURGERY!
I should caution that despite this victory we were not out of the woods. It wasn’t as though he was pain free, smooth sailing and ready to go home. But this was a great start for a dog we weren’t sure would be able to walk/hop on his own at all … let alone 12 hours later.
The down side, was that as voiced as a concern by his team pre surgery, he did have more neck pain than a normal dog would after amputation. He would cry out when they rotated which side he laid on and cried out when they helped him to stand. This is not surprising when you think of the way a forelimb amputee Hops … all that up and down neck movement and using your neck to stabilize and balance yourself is not great when you already have cervical arthritis, narrowing and possible disc disease.
Physical therapy stopped in to do acupuncture, laser therapy and passive range of motion exercises and the amazing critical care team worked to keep him comfortable with a continuous rate infusion of fentanyl, gabapentin and NSAIDs (Galliprant). He was unwilling to eat (not uncommon for Grover when he is on opioids) even with anti-naseau medication but that also meant he needed fluids to stay hydrated.
We had 3 goals that needed to be met to go home:
(1) Able to get up on his own (at least we had the walking part down!)
(2) Able to get off continuous rate infusion pain medications and on an oral or transdermal plan that kept him comfortable
(3)Willing to eat and drink on his own
We still had a ways to go … but so far we were off to a good start!
