Dog Surgery Day

Today is the day my collie, Dirona, gets her arthroscopic surgery to remove the bone chip in her elbow and fix the joints.  The VOSM clinic is very good about keeping me apprised of her status.   They called me at 9 am to tell me she was scheduled for early afternoon.  Then again at about 1p to tell me they were prepping her for the anesthesia and surgery.  They said they would call me again after she wakes and the doctor would call at the end of the day.


I dropped her off last night.  She was thrilled with the clerks at the desk who were very nice to her and she didn't really understand that she was staying and I was going.  She was ignoring me getting all the free pets from other people.  They gave me contact numbers and said it would be fine if I called the night number every hour to get an update on her.  Wow!  I would consider that to be harassment.  I do the best I can to get good reliable and competent medical care for myself and my pets.  When you go in for surgery, you have to trust the clinic and doctors to do a good job.  There is little point in worrying and fussing at them.  It's not like I could do a better job.  My vet gave this clinic a top recommendation and I heard only top recommendations from some dog people over the weekend, so there's every reason not to worry.

Since this is the first time Dirona has been away from me for a sleepover, I asked how she was doing. They said she is great with no fussing and very friendly to everyone who passes by.  I've worked at socializing the dog and getting her to not be afraid of unknown things so this is good news.  Now, we just wait.

The Vet called at 4:30 to give me the surgery report.  She had the best possible outcome from the arthroscopy.  There is no cartilage damage and no bits and pieces in the joint.  The arthroscopy ended up being diagnostic.  He didn't go after the mineralization/chip the xray showed in the soft tissue outside her joint because that would cause too much damage to the soft tissue and it won't cause problems where it is.  It will get encapsulated with scar tissue and not do any further damage.  The arthroscopy revealed a lot of inflammation of the tissues around both elbows so he injected cortizone into the joints to relieve that and we will have ultrasound and laser treatments to get that healed up.  He thinks she probably had a bad sprain that she keeps using so it hasn't healed.

The really good news is there is no cartilage damage so no arthritis in her future anytime soon!  And we have a good treatment plan we can follow to get her back to her energetic enthusiastic doggy self.

I go get her tomorrow.  2 weeks to heal, then we start re-hab.

Dirona has a blog too that is more or less from her viewpoint :http://missdirona.blogspot.com/ since she has other adventures that are not necessarily van related.  And it lets me see how my blog looks from the outside.