Tag Archives: orthopedic

Doctor’s orders…

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After spending the better part of an hour this morning with the orthopedic surgeon, he basically confirmed what was a foregone conclusion. Winston has a complete tear in his cranial cruciate ligament (CrCL). The only interesting bit I gleaned from the appointment was that the tear most likely occurred long before he started showing signs of it two weeks ago. His knee is already showing signs of scar tissue filling in and trying to stabilize the joint. That’s the good news.

For the moment, as long as he’s taking anti-inflammatory and not putting any undue strain on his leg, he’s getting along without any real sign of trouble. The bad news is that he can’t stay on the anti-inflammatory indefinitely. When that prescription runs out in a few weeks, we’ll have to make a judgment call on how severely his range of motion is effected, how much pain he’s in, and how much his quality of life is disturbed. For the moment, we keep him medicated and keep him relatively calm (which isn’t particularly hard with a bulldog).

For now, all options remain on the table – from basic medication and plenty of rest to the repeat of the TPLO surgery he had on the opposite leg three years ago. I wish there was something more definitive to report this evening. As you can probably well imagine, I’m not at my best when dealing with the vagaries of time and a whole lot of “maybe.”

10 week update…

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I realized this afternoon that it’s been a while since my last Winston update and figured with this being a slow news day it’s as good a time to correct that as I’m likely to find. For those of you playing along at home, tomorrow will be 10 weeks since his surgery. You’ll remember the first two weeks were close confinement with walking kept to an absolute minimum. The last six weeks have seen slightly less confinement, but still have kept activity rather limited. In two weeks when we go back to the surgeon for his alleged last post-operative check up, I desperately hope that she will give the all clear for him to resume as much of a normal life as possible.

I really don’t know which of us will be more excited to finally see the plastic pen disappear from the middle of the living room. That the current Rental Casa de Jeff is a tri-level split gives me a moment of pause, though. I think it’s safe to say that my boy has climbed his last set of stairs, which means that he’s more or less limited to the kitchen and living room for the foreseeable future. That’s a lot more space than he’s had in the last two months, but still feels pretty confining. The pitch of the steps and their location make any kind of indoor ramping prohibitive, but I’m still casting around for a better idea than throwing up baby gates and calling it a done deal.

One thing I do have to say is that he’s getting around far better than I would have expected given how much work they did to his leg. I suppose in the wild a dog either plays hurt or lays down and dies, so there’s probably more than a little evolution at play. Still, even with high quality medication I’m not sure two days after having my knee rebuilt I’d have much interest in getting up and looking around.

Winston has been a real trooper through the whole experience and it seems like the hard part for him is wrapping up. Now if I can get past the notion that 50% of dogs that blow out one knee also blow out the other, everything will be just fine. Until then, I’m going to spaz out a little inside every time the poor dog takes a step.