Surgery

A life sentence with mortal punctuation: part 5

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Last week: A second routine surgery turns complicated and results in my second near-death experience.

The hits don’t stop coming

1987 was a massive year for me, not only because of my appendix problems, but also due to several other events, both related and unrelated to that trauma.

I mentioned some of the related bits last week: the implosion of my first serious relationship, academic struggles, and the revelations of the second surgery.

My first serious relationship yielded to my second in a few short months.  By the time of the second surgery, I was firmly entrenched in coupledom again.  At that point, I really didn’t know how to function socially without a partner.  I was still so awkward on my own, still doubted my own value so much that it seemed the only option.

The man in question was attracted to wounded women.  This is not to disparage him in any way, because he was an excellent person, but I still have trouble seeing my virtues and can’t figure out why else he decided to enter into a relationship with me.  This is just a statement of fact, something he revealed to me later himself.

With regard to my academic difficulties, I missed a lot of school and because I tended to fall asleep toward the end of the day, I was doing poorly even in the courses I was there for.  In an attempt to catch up, I wanted to enrol in a correspondence course in history to offset my poor performance in other classes.  My mom and I met with a counsellor to discuss my options.

I was told, point blank, “You’re not smart enough to complete a correspondence course successfully.”  The counsellor in question was clearly looking at my recent marks, not on the A’s and B’s of previous years’ courses.  When I tried to press the issue, she said that I didn’t have the time and dedication to complete a correspondence course.

“You’re recovering from surgery and still pretty sick.  You’re heading for a second one in a few months.  You have enough to worry about without a correspondence course.”  Essentially, she thought I was too lazy to complete the course.  This was not the case, but I couldn’t convince her otherwise, so I left the session empty-handed.

Other events were converging to form a perfect emotional storm.

English: Tropical Depression One upon being de...

English: Tropical Depression One upon being declared (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the winter, my paternal grandmother had a stroke while driving home from visiting my aunt and uncle down south.  Her car shot through an intersection just after entering Sudbury and ended up on an embankment.  Fortunately, no one else was injured, but the car was totalled.  She was admitted to hospital, but as the days and weeks progressed, she did not wake up.

At first, they thought the stroke had caused more damage than they originally determined.  Further scans revealed that this was not the case.  As time went on and her coma continued, they needed to insert a feeding tube to keep her alive.  She could not continue to survive on intravenous alone.

They couldn’t insert the feeding tube.  Something was in the way.  A quick exploratory revealed that her abdomen was full of cancer.

We couldn’t imagine the kind of pain she must have been in during her long months of silence leading up to the stroke.  My grandmother was an intensely private and fiercely independent woman.

Due to my own health issues, I was not encouraged to visit my grandmother much.  Then, when my state of infection became clear, I was discouraged from seeing her at all.  Finally, I was brought up to say my goodbyes.  Without the intervention of a feeding tube, my grandmother would slowly starve, if the growing cancer didn’t get to her first.

The decision was made to remove all supportive measures and let nature take its course.

Family came up to visit and either stayed or returned for the funeral.  It was about that time that I started to cry for no reason.  I couldn’t cry when it seemed appropriate: when saying my goodbyes and at the funeral, but at odd times, I’d just sob uncontrollably or stare off into nothing.

I had no idea what depression was then and even though my boyfriend tried to tell me, I was closed to the message.

My friendship with Margaret suffered as well.  My first boyfriend was very jealous of my time and rarely let me do anything on my own.  He was everywhere and became sulky when I wanted a “girl’s night” or to do anything with Margaret that didn’t involve him.

My quick turnaround into my second relationship didn’t help matters.  This time I was the needy one and relied on my boyfriend, the picture of the strong, silent archetype, almost exclusively.  Margaret found a relationship of her own to fill the gap.  She needed someone she could rely on too.

Margaret’s mother was getting remarried and would be moving to Mississauga at the beginning of the summer.  Margaret was allowed to stay on with me for the summer, in my grandmother’s house until she joined her mother in Mississauga and I went away to the University of Guelph in the fall.

My parents had settled my grandmother’s estate in the spring and my father had to buy out his brothers of their shares.  My grandmother hadn’t left a proper will and a lawyer was hired to sort through the mess.  They would be moving into my grandmother’s house in September after I relocated to Guelph and renting out their house to pay off the second mortgage they had to take out to make the proper financial arrangements.

My grandmother’s house, though large, only had one bedroom.  My move down south would be a permanent one.  There was no place for me at home anymore.

Throughout this time, I didn’t write, or even think about writing.  There wasn’t any room for it in my life and I was too busy trying to fast-track through highschool and try to maintain some form of a healthy relationship with anyone to spare any time for my creativity.

In a relatively short period of time, I had a serious infection bookended by two surgeries, ended my first major relationship and entered my second, lost my grandmother, my home, and my best friend.  This was the beginning of a situational depression that it would take me years to recognize and sort through.

Next week: Fumbling toward stability.

A life sentence with mortal punctuation: part 4

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Last week: Friend wars.  Can a girl get post-traumatic stress disorder from those?

And now:

The appendicitis odyssey

I’m going to skip forward a few years.  They were largely unremarkable, trust me.  I wasn’t anything special in high school.

At fifteen, I entered my first serious relationship.  This pulled Margaret and I further apart, but in the summer I was sixteen, she invited me to go with her to a star party.

Margaret was and continues to be an amateur astronomer.  My interest lay mostly in continuing to spend time with her, though I did enjoy learning about the constellations and how to recognize them in the night sky.

Margaret and a group from the local astronomy club headed down to Star Fest that August with me in tow.  The weekend went well.  We stayed up late to look through various telescopes to see planets, nebulae, and galaxies far, far away.

The day we left, though, I wasn’t feeling so hot.  I had a stabbing pain in my gut.  That was the first attack.

Others followed and though I went to my doctor, my pain didn’t present as typical appendicitis.  It wasn’t in the right place.  So I had tests.  And more tests.  All with varied but negative results.

As the school year wore on, I started to fall asleep in science class, which had to that point been one of my favourites (organic chemistry-yay!).  I was still serving as acolyte at my parents’ church, looking more like Quasimodo as I walked, hunched over, to light and snuff the candles.  The pain got worse, and after a particularly terrible day, my parents took me to the hospital.

Typical presentation or not, emergency exploratory surgery was ordered.

Once again, I don’t remember the surgery, but I woke up feeling rotten with a drain poking out through my stomach.

For those of you who may not have had this particular medical procedure, let me describe it.  First, a six by six gel patch was placed over the incision site to stabilize the soft flesh.  Then a four inch incision was made.  There was a lot of infection inside of me (I’ll get to that in a bit) and so a length of surgical tubing was inserted to let it drain out, the wound packed, and I sent to recovery.

The doctor explained that I had not only an inflamed appendix, so inflamed that the complications were the same as if it had ruptured, but that I also had a grapefruit-sized (he described it to my parents as a softball) abscess on the appendix.  The reason it didn’t present as typical appendicitis was that my bowel was inverted (upside-down) and the reason ultrasounds had found nothing was that the massive, puss-filled abscess had obscured the appendix and unorthodox arrangement of my innards.

The appendix had not been removed.  The infection was so wide-spread that the surgeon would have had to remove most of my bowel along with it and leave me with a colostomy.  He had a daughter about my age and decided that he couldn’t do that to me (bless you, Dr. Keeley!) but this would mean a second surgery in a few months and intensive antibiotics in the meantime.

I was in the hospital for over a week.  They couldn’t get me back on solid food and I was so weakened by months of infection that my veins kept collapsing.  I had holes all over my hands, wrists, and arms by the end of it.  I wept when they had to change the intravenous site for the sixth time.

Other than the obvious, though, I had no clue that anything was amiss.  Friends and family all came in to visit, smiling, making small chat, all except my then boyfriend.  He came in and sat, silent and moping the whole time.  Eventually, I demanded to know what was wrong.  Why come to visit me if he wasn’t even going to bother talking to me?

“I almost lost you!” he blurted.  And that’s how I learned that I had nearly died.  Again.

He was certainly entitled to his feelings, but his selfishness astounded me.  In short order, as ill as I still felt, I returned his gifts to me and told him to hit the road.

The next three months were a trial.  Lots of antibiotics, and though the drain was removed before I left the hospital, the incision remained open and had to be packed, the dressings changed twice a day.

It stank.  Pus seeped through the dressings and my clothes on a regular basis.  The scar remains a puckered mess to this day.  My body is fond of forming cheloids.

The second surgery, the actual appendectomy, was coordinated with a test for malignant hyperthermia.  The condition had been detected in my family some years before and the test required the removal of a six inch strip of muscle.  Three were for the actual test and the other three for research.

Malignant hyperthermia is passed on genetically and is a condition which requires me to avoid both stimulants and standard anaesthetics.  Certain substances accumulate in my muscles and in situations of high stress, temperatures, or with exposure to certain anaesthetics, my body will go into a hyperthermic reaction.  My temperature rises until my muscles, including my heart and the intercostals, which facilitate breathing, shut down.  Cardiac arrest.

Fortunately, I’ve never had a full reaction, though I have always “run hot” and my muscles will twitch from time to time, often after exercise.

The surgeon for the second procedure was a clinician, and though excellent, was somewhat lacking in bedside manner.

Following that surgery, I was informed that Dr. Keeley should have removed the appendix and all the infected tissue the first time and that not to do so verged on malpractice.  A colostomy would have been better for me than the subsequent risks from the continuing infection.

She could not use the same incision site because, even after three months, I was still full of infection.  I had hoped that she would have been able to use the same location, if for no other reason than to remove the existing, twisted wound and create a more or less “normal” looking scar.

I was then informed that I had the highest level of the disease (there are eight) and that I could no longer have anything containing caffeine (coffee, tea, pop, or chocolate), alcohol, antihistamines, or any pain relievers that included muscle relaxants.  When I began to tear up (remember, I was only seventeen at the time, and I kind of enjoyed a lot of those things that she said I couldn’t have anymore) she looked at me, somewhat incredulously, and said, “I don’t know why you’re crying.  This is a good thing.  You’ll have a much longer, healthier life.”

At the time, researchers did not know everything about malignant hyperthermia and outlawed a lot of substances on the chance that they might predispose me to have a reaction.   Since then, I’ve learned that moderation is the key.

I missed a lot of school and barely made it through some of my courses.  It was my final year of high school too and though it was a little tense, I was actually accepted to my choice of universities for the following fall.  Other things happened that year too, but I’ll leave that for my next post in the series.

So that was my second brush with death.

Next week: Trauma mounts and depression rears its ugly head in earnest.

Has a routine surgery changed your life?  How so?  What came of your adventures under the knife?

Caturday Quickies: Pupdate

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Since the last time I blogged about my dear Nuala, we’ve had two veterinary appointments.  The first was on February 14, a month after the surgery.  I ferried Nu out to the Valley for her appointment with Dr. Hoscheit.

At that time, I was informed that Nu was doing well and that I could begin to walk her again.  Ten minutes, twice a day to start, graduating to twenty minutes, twice a day, then thirty, then a return to full activity.

Well, since she started having her difficulties, I’d cut Nu’s activity to a single twenty minute walk in the morning.  So I figured I’d just return to that activity and that we’d gradually reintroduce her to the stairs at my mom’s place, and hopping up of the bed and couch again.

We also started adding glucosamine to her food.  It’s stinky (green-lipped mussel extract) and she loves it.  Isn’t it funny/sad/wonderful how our pets can disappoint us so, just by being themselves?

I’ve always thought it odd that while dogs have these amazing olfactory powers, that it makes the smelly stuff more attractive (barf, poo, dead animals, unidentifiable fungus, other disgusting stuff).

It’s a dog rule, I guess.  Stinky = yum!  And I love Nu, even if she occasionally has poo-mouth.  I just don’t let her kiss me 😛

This past week, Phil and I took our pup to her regular vet, Dr. Wilkinson.  Dr. Hoscheit retired from his practice at the end of February.  We were lucky to get Nhappypupu in before he left.

So post-operative blood work was ordered, the sample taken, and we decided to take Nu off the Metacam to see how she would manage.  She has a lot of arthritis in her knee.  A lot.  So we’re going to wait and see.

So basically, life is kind of back to normal at the Marttila-Minaker household.

We’re happy to have our girl back to her usual antics.

 

Caturday Quickies

A life sentence with mortal punctuation: part 2

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

Last week: An early encounter with death.

The year I had my tonsils out

Tonsillitis is hell.  The true infection, the one that leaves your four-year-old self screaming, the monster pain in your ears reaching back into your brain, your throat, latching on with needle-like claws, and shredding.

I remember that.

I remember trying to lie still on my side on the couch while Mom administered oil-based ear medication into my ears, one after the other.  This would hopefully happen before the screaming started, was intended to pre-empt it.   I’d squirm and whine while the medication slowly dripped into my ears, swallowed doses of liquid antibiotics and Tempra (a liquid painkiller for children).

I remember once heading out in the car with my parents and maternal grandparents.  I’m not sure whether it was just for a picnic, or if it was a day trip to a camp site, but it was a ways out of town.  Mom hadn’t thought to bring my medication and just to spite her, my tonsillitis decided to act up.  Big time.

Mom and Nanny (I had to have a different name for this other older lady who wasn’t the same as Grandma, my paternal grandmother) tried to calm me down in the back seat, but I was howling by the time we reached our destination and we couldn’t stay.  I had to be returned home and dosed.

It quickly became apparent that surgery was in order.  Though this was the time during which doctors tried not to perform tonsillectomies, my situation was serious enough that everyone felt there was no other choice.

I don’t remember anything about the surgery itself.  I believe it went off without a hitch.  After the operation, all seemed well, and I returned home enjoying ice cream, popsicles, and TLC.

In the middle of the night, I woke, coughing, had trouble breathing, the air moving in and out of me with a rattling slurp, the sound of milk bubbling through a straw.  The next cough shot a black spatter onto my pyjamas and sheets.  I couldn’t summon the breath to call for my mom right away, my first attempt emerged a thready burble.

Each stuttering breath and cough produced a little more noise, until I was shouting, “Mom!”

The light switch flicked on, momentarily blinding me, but one look at the blood and I yelled again, despite the jagged burning in my throat, tried to crawl back from it, but it followed.  I was covered in blood.

My stitches had burst.

A frantic ride to the hospital and the doctor ordered me back into surgery and my parents were ordered out of the examination room, the male nurse assuring them that he could handle getting the intravenous inserted.

He sent Mom away.  It was abandonment, pure and simple.  A four-year old doesn’t distinguish between her parents leaving her and her parents being forced to leave her.

Worse, the nurse tried to stab me.  I showed him.

Mom and Dad were brought back in, allowed to hold my hand, held my legs down, while the newly bandaged nurse taped my arm to a block of wood and did his worst.  In the moment, I hated my parents for that, for letting the nurse hurt me.

I didn’t die, but I came close.

I don’t remember any of the iconic images typical of near-death experiences (NDEs).  No long tunnels.  No doorways of brilliant light.  No voices of lost loved ones calling to me.  No angels; no voice of God.

The road back from that second surgery was a long one.  I’d ingested so much blood, I became incontinent in the most embarrassing way, my family doctor plucked clots of blood out of my ears, and nothing, not even ice cream, tasted good for weeks.  More courses of liquid antibiotics followed, which stained my teeth indelibly and made me self-conscious for years.

I have a picture of myself right after the surgery, pale, skinny.  It was Christmas, but I couldn’t smile.

Mellie after the operation

Mellie after the operation

What’s stayed with me the most was the dream.

My first night home after the second surgery, I dreamed of my bed, empty.  The cheery yellow and white striped flannel sheets, the blue wool blanket turned down, the dark wood frame with the toy cupboard built in.  Just the bed in a kind of spot light, the rest of the room dark.  The image of the bed receded into the darkness and finally disappeared.

The feeling that I woke up with was that I had died, not that I really understood what that meant, but that I had ceased to exist and that the world I woke up in was a new one.  I had a new life, too.  A second chance.

Now, I’d say that I dreamed of one of those moments at which the infinite iterations of parallel universes converge.  I turned left.  The sensation was profound.

I started to have nightmares about falling, or being abandoned, that troubled me for years,

Deutsch: Engel holt die Seele eines Sterbenden

Deutsch: Engel holt die Seele eines Sterbenden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

and am firmly convinced that I had spontaneous out-of-body experiences (OBEs) at night.  During the latter, I felt like a helium balloon in a wind storm, flung, sometimes painfully, to the furthest reaches of my tether but always yanked back.  The ‘string’ was attached to my navel.

Try an experiment for me.  Poke your finger into your belly-button.  Press in hard and wriggle it around.  That will give you some idea what having a string attached to it and being hauled around by it feels like.

I’ve heard that the navel is supposed to be an erogenous zone (thanks for that one, Dr. Oz).  Sadly, I’ve never found that to be true.  It’s always been a slightly disturbing feeling for me.  I figure that’s just me.  My wiring isn’t quite what other people might feel is normal.  I’m cool with that.

I’ve written a short story about this experience for my thesis called “Tonsillitis Blues.”  I’ve written short fiction and poetry about it.

This experience is still in me and claws its way out from time to time, like it has today.

Next week, I’ll be delving into the period of my life that I refer to as ‘friend wars.’  These were my first experiences of bullying.  I think I did pretty well, even though I had no idea what it was I was dealing with.  This was also the period when I developed my first defenses against bullying, several of which resulted in my further isolation, and one of which meant that I became a bully myself.

I see the ‘friend war’ years as the time when my predisposition to depression was first anchored in my psyche.  It destroyed my self-confidence.

Have any of you had a non-traditional near-death experience?  A youthful trauma that resulted in years of nightmares?  How about out-of-body experiences?  When were you able to understand what happened to you and how it affected you?  What creativity has emerged from these experiences?

I’ll be posting my interview with Brian Braden shortly.

Talk to you soon!

Related articles

Pupdate, part the third

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

Yesterday marked the removal of Nuala’s staples.  She’d finished her cocktail of medications on Wednesday, and since then, had been increasingly restive.  I think as least one of the medications was to calm her down.

Nu doesn’t like to be this inactive.  She likes her morning walks, chasing her ball, wrastling on the floor.  After her meds were done, she wanted to get back to her normal routine.

This was challenging for my mom.  She called late last Sunday to suggest that we bring Nu over and that she keep her enclosed in the basement.  As Nu became more active, this became more demanding.  On Friday, Nu jumped onto the bed that Mom has in her basement.  She hadn’t even attempted it any time in the year previous.  She might be feeling better, but she’s not supposed to run or jump at all.

Try to tell her that.

A note on accommodations

I’m not talking hotel rooms; I’m talking about the ways that we’ve had to rearrange our lives to accommodate Nu’s recovery.

We have a small house, so limiting her activity isn’t too difficult in general, but we do have stairs that lead into the house and so bathroom breaks have been somewhat of a challenge.  We’ve been trying to help her up the stairs by slinging a towel around her abdomen, but lately she doesn’t have the patience for it.

While she was on the medication, we had to make sure that we administered it at the proper times and dosages.

Since walking was out, we had to make sure that she had relief before we went to work.  Nu’s a dog of habit and she doesn’t like to do her “business” in the yard.  She prefers to decorate the yards of others so I can show my love for her by cleaning up after 😛  This last week has been one of the coldest in Sudbury for the past few years.  Waiting outside, impatiently, for Nu to realize she had to choice but to drop a deuce in the yard was a B-triple-R challenge.

Our dog has the run of our house.  Normally, she sleeps on the bed (until it gets too hot) or on the couch.  These are two of her favourite places.  Because she’s not supposed to jump, we’ve had to get creative.  The couch isn’t so bad.  We can pull the cushions down and she won’t try anything.  The bed’s a different story, though.

We have a king-sized bed with a pillow top mattress.  Before Nu started to show signs of lameness, it was really high.  Neither Phil nor I had to sit down much to get in it.  When she was initially diagnosed with arthritis, Phil cut the legs off the bed, shortening it by six inches so that Nu could hop in again.

We’ve noticed something, though.  When we have laundry out on the bed, Nu won’t go near it.  So for the last week and a half, we’ve left the laundry spread on Phil’s side of the bed and he’s volunteered to sleep on the couch nights.  See, if we were just to go to bed as usual, Nu would be tempted to jump up.  She used to leap right over Phil to get into her preferred spot between us.  Then sometime in the night, she’d hop down again.

You see how we have a problem with this.

Tonight, however, we are going to bring Phil back from his exile and put Nu into hers.  He hasn’t been sleeping so well on the couch, so we’re going to try closing the bedroom door on her.  I anticipate some trouble …

We have to work some new system out, though, because Nu will be under restrictions for at least three more weeks.

It takes six to eight to heal bone completely.

naked pup bumSorry about the lack of a decent picture.  Nu won’t sit still enough for me to take one 😛

Unless something bizarre happens, you can expect pup-related silence for the next three weeks.  Our next appointment is February 16th, so I’ll catch everyone up then.

Nu thanks you for all of the support 🙂

Pupdate, part the second

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Please find the last pupdate here.

While I was away Jan 8-11 for IPCTD, Phil made the arrangements for Nuala’s surgery.  He took the x-rays out to Dr. Hoscheit and took Nu in for her pre-operative blood test.  On Friday, he made the appointment for Nu’s surgery: January 16, 2013.

I was home for the weekend, but then returned to Toronto for an in-person team meeting including budget discussions and discussion on the revised code of conduct.  While there, I talked to my manager about taking Thursday off.  I was completely up front about it with him and he was very accommodating.

So after my whirlwind trip to Toronto (down January 14 and up January 15), Phil and I drove Nu out to Dr. Hoscheit and went to work.  Just after noon, we got the report.  The surgery was over and appeared at first blush to be a success.  Nu was in recovery and the veterinary technician would call and check in with us when she completed her evening visit.

In the evening, the tech called and reported that Nu was doing well.  She spent 20 minutes with Nu, checking, medicating, and comforting.  Nu would be ready to return home the next morning.  We arranged to arrive for 9 am.

When we arrived, we brought some of Nuala’s food with us.  While the techs fed and prepped Nu for departure, we met a very sweet chocolate lab who’d had the same procedure only six days before.  Other than being shaved, we almost couldn’t tell she’d had an operation.

We booked the appointments to have Nuala’s bandage removed on Saturday (yesterday), and her staples removed the Saturday following.  The final follow-ups could be booked at that time.  We received three prescriptions, an antibiotic and two pain management meds, along with instructions on when to administer them.

Nu would continue to receive her Metacam in the evenings and with luck, all would be well within a couple of weeks.  Of course, we’d have to keep her quiet.  Any activity, even normal activity, could set back her recovery and potentially undo some of the benefits of the procedure.  She shouldn’t put weight on her leg and definitely shouldn’t be allowed to lick or worry at either the bandages or the incision.

Nuala was handed over to us, shaved, bandaged, and wearing the Elizabethan collar or, ‘cone of shame.”

bandage-girl

bandage-girl

The drive home was largely uneventful, and we managed to get her out of the car alright, but Nu likes to sniff as she walks, and as soon as she lowered her head, the cone became a shovel as she repeatedly jammed it into the ground.

Phil ended up carrying her into the house as the cone got stuck on every step en route to the entry, plus the door frame.  Needless to say, the cone of shame was removed as soon as we were safely in the house 🙂

Nuala post-surgery

Nuala post-surgery

Nuala

Looking good 🙂

Nuala’s been really good about keeping her leg elevated and not putting her weight on the leg.  I think we had to caution her against licking the bandage once.  We saw steady improvement, even on Friday.

Until the bandage was removed, we had to put a plastic bag over it when we took her out, and to assist her in getting up the steps, we used a towel wrapped around her abdomen to bear her weight on the way up.  The first couple of times we had her out, it was a bit of a production.

Yesterday, we took her to have the bandage removed.  Once again, she’s been very good, not licking at the staples and keeping her weight off the leg.  Phil and I are becoming expert (he more so than I) at cutting small tablets.  One of the three medications must be given in two and three quarter tablet dosages.

So that’s how my darlin’s faring this week.  Will likely have another pupdate coming in the next week or two to let you know how the staple removal and other follow-up appointments go.

The pupdate: Nuala’s ACL saga continues

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

When I first mentioned Nuala’s troubles, I indicated that if she didn’t improve over the holidays, that she’d be going in to Lockerby Animal Hospital for a full assessment.

This happened last Thursday, January 3, 2013.

The snow-nosian pupPhil and I took Nuala into the veterinarian in the morning and would pick her up after work.  During the day, she would be lightly sedated, a proper assessment of the ACL injury performed, and then some x-rays taken t see if any subsequent joint damage occurred.

As an unexpected bonus, they also trimmed Nu’s nails and scraped the tartar back on her teeth 🙂  due to the injury, we decided not to take her in for her regular grooming (we call it her spa day).  I’m recommitting to a regular dental care regime for my girl now.

After work, we met with Dr. Wilkinson with no little bit of trepidation.  Upon our last visit, Chad had said that if Nu needed surgery, that she’d likely have to go to Ottawa.  This presented problems for Phil and I because we don’t have the leave to take a week off and see Nu to her surgery.  Further, Nu doesn’t travel well and a six-hour car ride on either side of surgery would be untenable.

The verdict now: Nu’s ACL is indeed ruptured.  Chad figured it occurred over the holidays because her symptoms were much more pronounced now than they were before.

Surprisingly, the x-rays revealed that Nu’s hips were just fine 🙂

Phil and I explained our issues with traveling to Ottawa, and Chad provided a local solution, one Dr. Hoscheit, but time was of the essence, as the good doctor would be leaving his practice at the end of February.

Referral in hand, we hurried home and discussed how we would proceed.

On Friday, Phil made the call to Dr. Hoscheit and we waited for an appointment.  At 9:30 am on Saturday, the call came and we could be fit in at 12:20 for an initial consult.  We’d have to act quickly, as Dr. Hoscheit prefers to see a patient post-surgically for up to 2 months after.

At the appointment, Dr. Hoscheit made his own assessment of Nu, and afterward discussed options.  One of the procedures, a TTA, or tibial tuberosity advancement, was a possibility, but Dr. Hoscheit recommended a tightrope procedure instead.  He said that for a dog of Nu’s size and age, that the procedure had the potential to be much more successful than a TTA.

He would be able to proceed as soon as he ordered more tightrope material.  He hadn’t anticipated being able to complete another procedure before leaving the practice.

In the meantime, Phil will have to get the x-rays from Dr. Wilkinson as well as Nu’s blood test results, and bring Nu in for a pre-surgical blood test on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town and this will all be on Phil.  Fortunately, my mom has agreed to pick up the x-rays and lab results so that Phil will just have to come home, pick up Nu, and get her to Dr. Hoscheit’s in time for her 6:45 appointment.

So that’s how things are looking for the moment.

I think it’s a much more positive situation than we had expected and so both Phil and I are happy, relatively speaking.  We’re very grateful that the doctor has agreed to fit us in before his departure.

So that, for now, is the pupdate.

The dog in winter … just because

/ Melanie Marttila / 5 Comments

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, or even if you drop in occasionally, you’ve probably noticed that I write about my dog from time to time.  This is one of those times 🙂

Nu (Nuala) is a quirky beast.  First, she pees like a male dog.  Yes, she lifts her leg.  It’s a learned behaviour adopted from dog-friend Daisy, who in turn learned the skill from her dog-friend Colonel.  This is a particularly useful skill in winter, when snow banks often crowd the sidewalks.  Trust me, it’s better than the embarrassing (for me) pee in the middle of the sidewalk or driveway, which often occurs just when another pedestrian or the homeowner walks up.

She used to climb the banks, but I’ve had to curb that inclination.  More on that in a bit.

Nu also has a couple of behaviours reserved for winter.  She’s a sniffer.  The rest of the year, she walks with her nose to the ground and often finds the most interesting (read disgusting) things on the side of the road.  Used tissues are a favourite, but occasionally she’ll go for the feces of other animals or the leavings of feral cats (bird corpses mostly).  It’s so disappointing when your pet actually behaves like a dog 😛

Her reaction to having these things extracted from her mouth has resulted in one of her many nick-names: Clamps.  Nu will clench her mouth shut, and physically curl her body to prevent either Phil or myself from getting to the offensive bit.  She becomes completely rigid and I’ve often had to lift most of her 80 pound weight to get at whatever tasty she’s found.

The snow-nosian pupWhen the first decent snow falls, though, the sniffing takes on a whole new dimension.  Nu buries her entire face in the snow, snuffling and digging through it in her attempt to find whatever delicious smell has attracted her. She emerges as the snow-nosian pup.  The snow melts pretty quickly, but sometimes we see the abominable (adorable) snow dog.

I walk Nuala using a Halti.  She can haul anyone clear across the driveway when she has a mind to, so it helps to keep her in line without causing strain on her neck.  She hates the thing though, and during the rest of the year, she’ll rub her chin on the ground in an attempt to scratch beneath, or remove the Halti entirely.

In the winter, this behaviour turns into what I like to call her seal impression.  Nu slides on the snow, nose first, clearing a path for the rest of her to follow.  Her front paws fold back (kind of like flippers) and she slides across the snowy yard, wiggling.  She really does look like a seal.

In recent years, Nuala’s had a few minor health situations.  A couple of years ago, she sheared one of her molars in half.  This necessitated a lengthier-than-expected dental surgery that left her disoriented and whining in that particular post-surgical way.  Any of you who have gone through it with your pet will know what I mean.  Stumbling when she tried to walk, and moaning through a clenched and quivering jaw.  It was truly pathetic.

Last year, she developed what we thought was arthritis, and she was started on a regimen of Metacam and Cartrofen which seemed to be working, but this year, after her Cartrofen booster, she started limping more than usual, not less.

She wouldn’t put weight on her right rear leg and when we took her in to the vet last week, the tentative diagnosis was an ACL injury.  Yes, animals get them too, but unlike humans, you can’t tell them the reason why they can’t run around like a yahoo anymore, climb snow banks, and get overly excited over company.

Here are a couple of helpful videos from Vetstoria.  Note: The second one shows the actual surgery and those uncomfortable with graphic medical information should steer clear.

We’re trying to keep her quiet, and ‘easy,’ ‘whoa,’ and ‘no’ have become a large part of our communication these days.  If she doesn’t improve over the holidays, Nu will be admitted to the vet’s for a day where she’ll be sedated and a definitive diagnosis made.  At this point, she’s resisting the manipulation that could potentially reveal the extent of the injury.

Because the ligament is soft tissue, an x-ray won’t show anything about the ACL.  It will show any ancillary damage caused to the bone, however, so that too might be in Nuala’s future.

If the ACL is significantly torn or detached, Nuala’s headed for surgery, either in Ottawa or Guelph, and that’s an issue for us because both Phil and I work and Nu doesn’t travel well, even over short distances.  One or both of us would have to take the time off work, and neither of us has the vacation to accommodate such a trip.

Though expensive, the cost is not the issue with us.  Our last dog, Zoe, had a couple of Zoesurgeries in an attempt to remove the cancer (hemangiosarcoma) that she developed.  The bill was over five thousand and in the end, the cancer had spread and still resulted in her death.  Sad days, those.

Our cat, Thufir, developed diabetes, and we treated him for years with metformin and then insulin before he finally succumbed to complications.  Phil and I believe that pet ownership includes the responsibility for the animal’s overall health.  These unforeseen crises are some of the reasons we have credit cards and a line of credit.

So that’s life with Nuala these days, who’s earned yet Thufiranother nick-name, the Hoblin, as a result of her current injury.

Will likely update you in the New Year with the developing situation.  I won’t lay claim to prescience, but I have a feeling that surgery will be in our collective future.

Do you have a pet with health issues?  How are you managing it?  My best wishes to anyone dealing with anything serious.

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