In and Out
C
A consult was performed, a procedure was scheduled, a puppy was sedated. Now, a week later, I am finally calm over the situation. We brought her home with stretchy purple thing wrapped around her, a few pieces of gauze, and a bottle of death-inducing pain pills (that we did not administer). The *giant* suture she came home with was bad enough to make me want to cry. The way she was listlessly wandering around the office, as if she were in a very strange dream, made me coo and rub her head, telling her everything was ok and i loved her. She laid on a nest of dog pillows i made for her in the floor of the office and whimpered softly as the anesthesia wore off. Needless to say, I felt pretty bad about putting her through all that. Then the infection started. I knew it would happen. I mean, she’s a dog. She walks through the grass, she lays on the floor, she licks her own butt and she licks her own wounds. You’ll note that while the vet did send us home with the death pills, he did not send us home with antibiotics, an e collar, or a drainage tube. I thought this was a little strange but what do *I* know. I didn’t go to animal doctor school. At 3am, early Tuesday morning the area under the suture had gotten so filled with fluid that it was starting to resemble a fraying baseball. She was panting pretty heavily and pacing. I woke Hugo up to confirm my diagnosis (“It’s fscked up, right?” … “Yeah. It’s fscked.”) and made a phone call to the animal ER. This makes my third trip there and I like their team quite a bit. While we were there something finally gave way and the fluid started seeping out of my poor dog, all over the floor. She had a fever which pointed to an infection which means our vet is a retard and I need to learn to speak up. A credit card swipe and 45 minutes later, they wheel Coco out on a metal table with wheels. She now appeared as I had expected her to when I picked her up the first time. Totally stoned with a very well bandaged side (stretchy blue this time!), a drain tube stitched in place, an e collar, and antibiotics. It took 3 of us to get Coco, a 90 pound, dog shaped lump of spaghetti, into the back seat of my 2 door coupe. Coco is a rock star though and she managed to stand up and walk out of my car after a little encouragement. If she hadn’t done that… we’d have probably taken a nap in the car until the sun came up. I finally got in bed and asleep sometime around 7am. At 1pm I pulled off her dressings and it looked 100x better than the night before. It’s looking even better now, almost 24 hours later. As for me, I’m looking for a new vet. I don’t know why I don’t trust my own instincts more. That’s something I need to work on.