Just about 3 weeks ago I had never heard of TPO surgery. I was moderately stressed about how to keep Hudson calm for 8 days after a simple neuter surgery. Nothing worse had crossed my mind at that point. When I arrived at the vet to drop him off for his surgery, they asked me a series of questions. Did we want him microchipped? Did we think we would need a mild sedative for the first couple of days? What about a cone to keep him from licking the incision? Were we interested in having them do a juvenile hip screen? They told me it would be a good idea since his breeds are both prone to hip dysplasia, plus he would already be asleep, which is usually required for the necessary hip x-rays. I told them to go ahead and do it, even though I knew my fiancé would think I had wasted the money. With that, I left him and headed to work. I was pretty proud of myself for not crying. I cried when I left my first dog to be neutered a couple of years ago.
A couple of hours later, my cell phone rang at work. I was expecting them to call and tell me he was out of surgery and to schedule a time for me to pick him up. I was surprised to hear the vet’s voice instead of the technician. Then the dreaded words…I’m calling about the hip x-rays. He said we had reason to be concerned, and he feels like Hudson could be borderline for surgery. Crap. Hip surgery? I was kind of caught off guard, so I just said okay and hung up the phone and started to google.
That evening when I picked them up, they gave us a disc of his x-rays and a referral to see a specialist. Obviously, I took Hudson home and loaded the disc into my computer. Shockingly, I had no idea what I was looking at. I googled hip dysplasia xrays and compared. It didn’t help.
My fiancé and I spent a long time talking about it, still not knowing what “it” really was. We finally decided I would call the vet back tomorrow and ask more questions. I did call the vet back, but when he got on the phone I really had no idea what to ask…it came out something like this:
Yea, uhh, I have a question about Hudson’s hips…What?
He seemed to know exactly what I meant by my one word question. He said we should go see a specialist if we would even consider the surgery, as it could make a huge difference in the quality of life of Hudson. While it seems definite that a dog with hip dysplasia will develop arthritis, it is impossible to say at what point or to what extent they would be affected. Great. That totally cleared everything up…or something.
We had nothing to lose from going to see the specialist. Well, except for the $130 it would cost for the appointment, so we made the appointment for the next week and kept googling.
This is our little guy, Hudson aka Hudsey Wudsey
No comments:
Post a Comment