You are viewing entries tagged with the keyword Surgery
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Luna came through her breathing surgery with flying colors. The vet called and gave us an update at 5pm and told us that Luna was out of surgery and awake and looking around. She was alert and seemed to be in good spirits. Her only issue is that she had a noisy neighbor 
During her breathing surgery they shortened her soft palate, widened her nostrils and removed her saccules.
We also received the results of her CAT Scan. The test revealed that Luna has a prolapsed disc in her neck and two prolapsed discs in back. Surgery is not recommended at this time and we meet with the neurologist tomorrow afternoon when we pickup Luna to go over a treatment plan. I'm not sure what the plan is going to be, but I sure do not want it to be 6 weeks of keeping Luna still. To me, that doesn't seem like a feasible option.
I will let you know more after we pickup Luna. I sure can't wait to have the little girl back home with us!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
First, I want to start off by thanking everyone for the well wishes and positive thoughts. It means a lot and is very helpful when trying to get through stressful days like yesterday.
Luna has been doing very well since coming home yesterday evening. As soon as she got some dinner she was ready to snooze. She was happy to snuggle on the couch with us, but when we went to bed, she got super excited. She couldn't wait to get up on the big bed and do some serious snoozing. About 1 minute after I put her on the bed she was sawing logs.
I haven't had a chance to get pictures of her stitches. I know she has 6 stitches in her ear, but I'm not sure how many she has on her elbow. When I normally pet Luna, I usually give her a scratch behind her ear, so I have to be really careful not to fall into old habits and pet her stitched up ear.
She doesn't seem to be in much pain, although she is on a pain med for the next few days. Today, she seems very content to sleep, so that is what we are going to let her do.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Update 6:30PM:
Luna is home and all things considered is doing very well. She has about 6 stitches in her ear and a few more on her elbow. So far, the elbow incision seems to be giving her the most trouble. She was very happy to get some dinner a few minutes ago. She is still a bit drowsy. We are going to curl up on the sofa and just relax. More updates coming tomorrow. Thanks for all the good wishes. Luna is back home and on the road to recovery.
Update 1:30PM:
Luna is out of surgery and doing well. In total, they removed 3 mast cell tumors. Two on her ear, one on the inside, one on the outside and one tumor from her shoulder. All 3 have been sent out for testing and hopefully we will have the results soon. The good news for today is that Luna is waking up and will be ready to go home this evening.
We dropped a purple spotted Luna off at the vet this morning for her tumor removal and a dental cleaning. We marked all the little bumps that we could find last night and I am hoping that none of those come back as mast cell tumors.
Unfortunately, the only thing we can really do now is wait. I should hopefully hear something by 1PM (Eastern Time). As soon as I know something, I will give you an update.
Friday, July 2, 2010
I wanted to let everyone know that Benjamin is home and is doing very well. He was very excited to see us this morning and was bouncing around like his usual self. He certainly did not look like a pug that just had surgery the day before.
After we got home and Henry and Luna frantically smelled him for clues to see where he had been, Benny hopped up on the couch and took his usual spot on the pile of pillows. He is still there now, snoring away, getting some much needed rest.
Thank you for the well wishes and have a great weekend!
Friday, July 2, 2010
Yesterday, Benny had his consultation for his soft palate issues at the the specialist. The consultation went very well. So well, actually, that Benjamin had the surgery yesterday.
The surgery wasn't planned, but there was an open slot on the surgery schedule and after the consultation wrapped up the surgeon said it would be no problem for Benny to have the operation that day. It went against all of my instincts to have Benny's surgery yesterday. It was unexpected. Well, it was sorta expected because I knew he would be having it, I just wasn't planning on it being so soon. I didn't feel prepared. But, then I thought to myself, what exactly do I have to prepare for. It's not like I am doing the surgery. As odd as it sounds, since I didn't have a night or two to worry about the upcoming surgery, I didn't feel ready.
I managed to get a hold of myself and realize how ridiculous my thoughts were and I gave the go ahead to put Benny on the schedule. After all, we were there and Benny had already skipped breakfast for his requested consultation fast. If we scheduled the surgery on a different day, Benny would need to fast again and I know how much he hates to miss a meal. Plus, with the holiday weekend, we would be off on Monday and be able to tend to Baby Benny while he recovers.
So we left Benjamin yesterday morning to have what they called his Brachycephalic Surgery. The surgery includes soft palate resection, a rhinoplasty (widening of the nasal passages), and if needed laryngeal sacculectomy. It turns out that Benny needed the laryngeal sacculectomy but not the rhinoplasty. During the surgery they determined that Benny's nasal passages were not too constricted and they would only be able to improve them a minimal amount. So they opted not to do the additional procedure.
When we spoke to the surgeon after the operation, he told us that Benny's soft palate was "definietely elongated" and his saccules where very much in the way. Shortening and removing these items should help Benny tremendously.
Benny had to stay at the vet's office last night, but we get to pick him up today at 10:45 AM. I will be so happy to get the little guy back home. He was bouncing off the walls of the exam room with nervous energy when we left him yesterday, so I am pretty sure he will be happy to get back home and relax with his brother and sister. Benny is all about sticking to his routine and yesterday was no where near ordinary for him.
I hope everyone enjoys the holiday weekend. I am looking forward to a nice quiet weekend with the pugs. Happy 4th of July!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The shaved patches on Benny's front paws from his surgery keep reminding me of wristbands. Which for some reason has the song "Physical" by Olivia Newton John stuck in my head.
Don't ask me how I made the leap but for the last few days all I have been singing is "Let's get physical, physical,..."
In other news, Benjamin had his stitches taken out and his incision is healing very nicely. I am very happy to see him on the mend and getting back to being his spunky little self.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Yesterday, we dropped Benny at the vet to have a chest x-ray taken. Benny, has been coughing every now and again and after Solsey's chronic cough we are paranoid whenever one of the pugs coughs. So, last week we made an appointment to talk to our vet. We explained the situation and our paranoia and our vet thought that the best course of action would be to bring Benny in one morning and they could lightly sedate him and get a good chest x-ray to see what was going on.
Funny side note, Solsey never needed to be "lightly sedated" for her x-rays. She was such a good girl that they could just plop her down and she would remain completely still while they did the x-rays.
Benjamin also had a bump on his chest that we showed our vet during our appointment. He said while Benny was sedated he would take a better look and possibly aspirate it to find out what was going on.
So, we dropped Benny off yesterday morning for his procedures, hoping to find out what was causing the tickle in his throat from time to time.
Just before lunch, I got a call from the vet. I thought it was a bit early for Benny to be finished, but I thought maybe they were just running ahead of schedule. Instead of it being a vet tech, it was my vet on the other line. As soon as I heard his voice, I got nervous. The vet never calls just for an update. Sensing my nervousness, he quickly reassured me that Benny was lightly sedated and doing OK. However, they aspirated the growth on his chest and had a look at it under the microscope and it is a mast cell tumor.
My stomach sank.
Since it was a mast cell tumor, my vet wanted to put Benny completely under and remove it and get it sent off for testing. I gave the go ahead and yesterday, Benny had the tumor removed from his chest.
The incision runs vertically on his chest and is closed with 10 stitches. It is in a really awkward spot to bandage, so the vet told us to keep Benny in a t-shirt to help keep the wound clean.
Benny is still pretty wiped out from his big day, so it is a little too early to tell if he is in much pain. After we got him home, we tried to set him up on one of the dog beds, but he wanted to be on the sofa. So we made him a nice little place to rest on his favorite spot on the sofa. He has been comfortably resting ever since.
In the meantime, the waiting game has begun. We could have the pathology results back as early as Friday, but more than likely we won't know anything until after the holiday weekend.
Needless to say, I am sick with worry. We don't have a great track record of getting good news with pathology reports. However, I am hoping that our luck will change.
As far as the chest x-rays are concerned, Benjamin's trachea looks very good as do his lungs. However, his soft palette is elongated. This is the most likely culprit of his cough. So, after we know the pathology results and he chest incision has fully recovered it is off to the specialist to have his soft palette shortened.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Well, I relapsed this weekend and the pugs are now the proud owners of a new dog bed. This bed is memory foam like and should be easier on the joints so I thought it might be good for Sol. We shall see. So far the pugs seem to like it.
Sol did pretty well over the weekend. She is definitely back to her old self. She even went for a little walk on Sunday - at a reasonable hour even.
I anticipate getting the pathology results later this week. I have been trying to put them out of my mind as I am not a very patient person. Good news or bad news I prefer just to know.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Sol continues to do well. She slept most of Thursday, which was to be expected. Her appetite is back in full swing which is always a good sign. The biggest problem we are having is that the little bugger can a find a pill in pretty much anything.
For the curious, here is a picture of Sol's incision on her belly that I took the night of her surgery day. If you are squeamish or you happen to be eating breakfast feel free to skip right over that link.
The 2010 calendar submissions came to a quiet close earlier in the month. We received over 1,250 amazing pug photos! I was happily surprised. A huge thank you to all that submitted pictures.
I have been hard at work on the calendar whenever I have a moment of downtime. I am hoping to send it off to the printer by the middle of next week, which would keep things on track for an early October release date.
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! You all deserve it! I'm sure everyone is tired after sending all those well wishes to Solsey Baby.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Well, as promised, here is the follow up to Luna’s day at the dentist last week. I have been putting off writing this post because things did not go quite as expected on her teeth cleaning day. We knew her teeth were not in super shape as she did suffer from doggy halitosis or as we call here in the OBP household “stink breath”. When we got Luna her breath was terrible, but that was mainly due to other medical concerns. Well, this time, her breath was awful because her teeth were terrible. We just didn’t know how bad it really was.
She has severe periodontal disease. She lost a total of 4 teeth in the process of her teeth cleaning, one of which just fell out during the procedure and the other 3 were extracted. She lost one around the house last week, too. So, she is down 5 teeth this week. This has been a mortifying experience for us and a painful one for her. We don’t get around to brushing the pugs’ teeth each day. However, we usually work in a brushing at least once a month and during the brushing Luna is by far the worst in terms of cooperation. Plus, her mouth is tiny which gives us almost no room to work. So, I guess you can say we aren’t very diligent about brushing their teeth. The boys have had this type of teeth brushing routine their whole life and we had never experienced anything like this before with the boys. Henry’s teeth are actually pretty good while Benny’s are a little worse, but apparently nowhere near as bad as Luna’s.
The only real saving grace in all of this was that the vet said that there was no way for us to tell just how bad her teeth were until she was under sedation. When you look at her teeth, from above the gumline, they look alright. The vet saved her teeth and we have them here now. She showed how terrible and decayed they were under the gumline. She did say that her past life history plays a contributing role and that Luna’s tiny mouth of course play a part, but it definitely makes us feel like bad pug parents when we have our little girl in for routine care and when she comes out we have this overwhelming feeling that we have been neglecting her. It is just so disheartening.
We knew when we rescued her that we would be giving a spoiled forever home but feeling like we dropped the ball on her dental care is just devastating for us. We feel like we let her down. Our goal was to have her be just as healthy as the boys once we “got her up to speed” and we felt like we had finally done that once we got her on a good diet, found a specialist for her eye care and got her eye medications regulated.
The silver lining around this gray cloud is that we are more aware than ever as to what we have to do to be sure that Luna keeps her teeth. (We will of course do the same for the boys and Cupid, too.) We have always known that poor dental health leads to other medical issues,but somewhere we got side tracked and we are ready to get back on track. It is even more important in pugs to maintain teeth brushing and dental care because their teeth are such a jumble in their crowded little pug palate.
So, we took a couple of days to have a pity party for Luna and kick ourselves a little bit, but now we are ready to get serious about good dental health. We can’t get back her lost teeth, but we certainly can keep her other teeth in tip top shape.
Here is a picture of the teeth that Luna had extracted. The points on top of the teeth are below the gum line, and as you can see, the area that was actually below the gum line show the most signs of decay.
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