Sunday, April 24, 2011

Spring brings a bit of a rebirth for Zane

Zane has adjusted well as a tripawd. He spends his days on the back deck enjoying the sunshine while being shaded by giant sunbrellas. He rules over his kingdom with a watchful eye.

Barking has become a favorite activity so we have been piece meal putting up privacy fencing around our backyard. It's been a slow process but we are almost there. Zane's view of our neighbor directly behind us has been fully blocked and now another section where kids play in a pool all day has been blocked. So now we don't have the danes charging the fence so much.

Cancer sits on the back burner in our house as much as we can keep it there. We have opted out of doing the every 3 month xrays to see if mets are showing in the chest. We can't afford it for 1, and we can't do anything with the information for 2. So we shall remain blissfully ignorant and continue to treat Zane as normally as possible.

Zane had a small non healing wound on his stump where the skin from his incision has healed by turning in on itself and creating a belly button. It's his stump button. It has been a constant problem area. He's had a track record of being reactive to internal sutures and clearly this has been a problem. He has developed big abscesses in the area where his sutures remain under the skin. His body doesn't break them down as it should and they remain there causing irritation and inflammation.

As if we haven't had enough to deal with, this stump button has leaked fluids and required a lot of aftercare. We found a wonderful emergency care vet a couple months ago that took great pains to help get this problem under control. She works an over night urgent care program at a regular vet hospital. It has worked out really well to bring Zane in late in the evening during urgent care hours when she is not busy so she can work on flushing out the area. We've all done our share of ewwwing at the yucky stuff that pours out of this wound. Zane takes it all in stride and just enjoys the attention :)

We feel like we might have finally made a break through with the wound. No yucky drainage stuff for about 2 weeks now! That frees us up to deal more with Daizy Lu who just had her first acl surgery 2 weeks ago. Oye vey! That makes for our 9th acl surgery. I think Daizy will need a post of her own.

Happy Easter all!