Brighter Days Ahead

11/3/2008

It’s been a few days since I posted anything about Calamity so thought I’d share her progress.

She’s been getting around a lot better & becoming more active.

I removed her second fentanyl patch on Saturday & reduced her tramadol to one tablet twice daily. She still gets one gabapentin in the morning and metacam in the evening. This seems to keep the edge off of the pain and she only has a few little yipes daily now. This are nothing like the gut wrenching cries she had before.

At 11 days post op-her meds schedule goes like this:
Breakfast: 1 gabapentin, 1 cephalaxin, 1 tramadol
Dinner: 1 tramadol, 1 cephalixin, 1 dose metacam, 1/2t GLC (her glucosomine)

We have a crate set up in the living room for her to go into with the door opened always so she can come & go at will. Yesterday & this morning, she has not wanted to even be in there, now I find the others taking turns laying in it!

Last night she "cockroached" for the first time since her surgery! A true sign, to me, that she is beginning to get back to her old self.

At bedtime last night, she fought the Old Fart & myself to not go into the crate room for the night! She played every trick she knew! We will keep her in there nightly until her staples come Out so she can not get hurt by the others while we sleep. She was sure a pistol, I tell ya!

Her staples come out Wednesday morning (she has 44 of them). I think that will make a big difference in a lot of her movement.

A friend told us to hang in there & take it one day at a time….we did. Some of the days were very hard & I cried many times. If anyone ever thinks this is a breeze, they are only kidding themselves, it’s tough & emotional, but it is a short time in the big picture of their lives.

Now things we are looking at for the future is how we will deal with her when/if she develops LS (as most greyhounds do). I have found a very good vet who advocates chiropractics, acupuncture & homeopathic medicine, I believe we will start taking Calamity to her to make sure she is getting the best care we can give her to insure she will have a wonderful life.

I’m so relieved we seem to be out of the woods.