Wednesday, November 29, 2006

More of same...

Well, no big news today on Daphne. The Boy's vet has today off but agreed to look at her x-rays from home - hooray! Our vet agreed to send them down (yesterday) but then I got a call first thin this morning telling me that our vet's assistant sent the x-rays priority mail rather than FedEx. I cannot begin to tell you the number of times I quadruple checked that our vet was okay sending these x-rays FedEx so that The Boy's contact could have them today. Our vet was totally sorry about it, but that means putting off any decision for a while. Especially since the x-rays were being sent to The Boy's contact's home and so he won't even get them until the end of the day Thursday. I know it's selfish, but we just need to know what to do - what's going on. Right now we're having to drug our new dog to keep her sedate because she has a severely broken femur and no cast, no external fixiter, nothing.

Our vet said she'd feel better putting a splint on Daff's leg so I took her in this morning. Here's a picture of that ridiculousness! She loves her new hedgehog! Only prob. is that a few hours later the splint slipped which torqued our poor dog's leg even worse so thankfully it's gone now and she's much much happier. Poor thing!

The good news is that she doesn't have heart worms, so there is silver lining in all of this :)

The hardest part is the roller coaster. Vet #1 said yesterday "no question, amputate." Then, when he found out we were both attorneys he said, "well, if you have the money it might be worth fixing." Then our vet said, "no question, amputate" and for some very good reasons: there's already arthitis, her bones are swiss cheesy, and she'd have to be confined for months and months with no guarantee. Then this morning our vet said that she's spoken to her surgeon about the case and he said the leg might be saveable. So what do we do? I mean, everyone says amputation gets rid of the pain now and she's up and normal in about 2 weeks and will live a very happy life. Getting it fixed means another dangerous surgery and possibility of infection that our vet says might already be there. It means keeping a dog that wants nothing more than to play locked up in a pen for months and months. I guess it just seems so much harder because we're in an Indian Summer and she loves to lay outside and watch the birds and trees. There's a part of me that wants to fix it if we can because it seems that is what you do. But at the same time there's a part of me that wonders if she'll be happier if it's amputated. It's surprising how much goes into a question like this and what I thought was the easy or best answer may not be what I used to think it was.

So confusing. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awwww! Poor girl! That's such a hard decision, and only you guys can make it.

Personally, I haven't done enough research. From what you said, it sounds like she'd have arthritis pain--for the rest of her life?

And bone infection ... I know a human who was in a big accident, with infections in one of his bones. He's had problems incessantly for years and years and years, struggling with antibiotics and the infection spreading here and there--even life-threatening at times.

But ... what do I know? I hope the best for the little sweetie. Please keep us posted!