Tripawd Part II

For those of you with whom I wasn't providing text updates, the story of the amputation of Harley's leg is a bit of a saga.  In my last post, I stated Harley would be having her leg amputated on Monday morning.  I dropped her off at the vet, and headed to work.  About two hours later, the vet called.  While starting to anesthetize Harley, the vet noticed she really wasn't doing too well.  They did some blood work and found Harley to be very anemic.  He couldn't risk the surgery because in such a state, Harley would have issues clotting and also would not be able to fight infections.  Thus, the surgery was called off.  When I picked her up, I asked what we could do.  He gave us some injections for Harley in an effort to raise her red-blood cell count.  The tumor in Harley's leg could be affecting her bone marrow, which would then reduce her ability to produce red blood cells.  Thus, getting her well wasn't nearly as simple as giving her some iron pills.  In fact, when I asked the doc straight up if he thought we'd get her to a point we could risk surgery, he was nice enough to tell me, "No."  Thus, Monday was very somber.  We didn't really tell Bode the grim news.  We did tell him she needed more "stuff" in her blood, and that we were going to try to give her medicine to make this happen.  He was quite shaken up--we had told him the surgery would remove the very painful limb and that even though amputation would be painful, it would be nothing compared to the constant pain of a tumor.  Bode cried a lot Monday night, saying, "I wanted my doggy to be free of pain."  We didn't feel right about compounding this and telling him she didn't have long to live, as even though the tumor wouldn't kill her right away, the pain would be unbearable and euthanasia would have to occur.

So Monday wasn't a great night in the McGuirk home.  At some point, and I'll embellish a bit here for the sake of story-telling and say I was watching the Tour de France, when I thought, "Can we do some blood doping to increase Harley's red-blood cell count?"  It works for athletes--take their blood, store it, let the body replenish the blood, and then reinject either the blood or the red-blood cells.  I called the doc in the morning just to see if my idea had merit.  He said he couldn't do that at his facility, and he also thought Harley might not be able to handle giving a lot of blood.  Plus, it would still be a few weeks before she could have the surgery, which would be a painful fortnight.  But he recommended I call some internal medicine vets to see what they thought.  I spent some time on the phone, calling different clinics.  One of them said, "Yes, we do blood transfusions here, but we get our blood from the North Powers Animal ER--why don't you try them?"  So I called, talked to the techs and docs, and they said to bring her in.  I spent about three hours with Harley with the doc on Tuesday.  They checked her out, got her records from Harley's regular vet, and finally said, "Yes, we can do a transfusion tonight and the surgery tomorrow."  Yes!  But still there was a lot that could happen, so we weren't overly optimistic.  We admitted her to the hospital Tuesday night, and Bode was very relieved--"She's getting the surgery, right?"  And, like before, we didn't tell him about all the risks.  Wednesday morning, I talked with the vet, and the transfusion went fine.  Then the amputation surgery started around 3:00 in the afternoon.  At 5:30, my cell phone rang, and we were all nervous wrecks.  I answered, and it seemed like forever before the person on the phone said, "Harley did great in the surgery, and is now recovering."  Awesome news, but I wanted to tell her the first word should be either "good" or "bad" and to dispense with the formalities.  This morning, I talked with the vet again, who said we could pick Harley up in the afternoon.  We got her, loaded her into the car, and brought her home.

She still has a long way to go--about 24 hours ago, she had a leg hacked off, and I'm telling myself this more than I tell you because I need to temper my expectations.  We're helping her move around as she gets used to her new body and recovers from the surgery.  She ate her dinner, and is resting with a big cone on her head to prevent her from licking.  She did have a little bathroom accident in the house, but that's why we have our own sophisticated carpet cleaning machines (and we've now learned the lesson to keep Harley off the carpet :-)

I will post more as she improves.  It took Auburn a couple weeks before she was moving around the house, and we expect it'll be the same, if not longer, for Harley.  One day at a time is what we're focusing on.  And I've probably blabbed long enough--you just want to see her, yet?  Below is a picture of Harley dog sans the white cone (which went back on right after I snapped the picture).

Thanks to everyone who offered to help during this time.  Ashley and Bode head to Houston on Saturday, so it'll just be Harley, Joey, and me.  While this will be more work for me, it might be better for Harley to just have some time to herself to figure things out.  Here's hoping :-)