Tank's Journey

Tank had his 1 week post-op visit yesterday. The Oncologist has said he would see us then to go over our options, but he had an emergency and was not there, so on the cancer front, we don’t know anything yet. The vet checked Tank over and everything looked good. We had not taken Tank’s t-shirt off all week, I would just pull it up to check his incision area. I just prefer not to look at it all the time, so the t-shirt helps but that part of the surgery at the back of my mind!

Tank has had these random outbreaks of this horrible crying/whining/howling. We all rush to him, reposition him, give him lots of love and they pass. I had posted on the forums about it, which comments went about half and half between pain meds or phantom pain. The surgeon told us that in an amputation like Tank’s, where they take the entire leg, they end up with these muscles that used to control the leg. They try to save as much as they can, so they basically stitch muscles together that aren’t used to working together. He said they randomly fire against each other in the early stages causing pain until they are signaled by the brain to not fire. He said this will be gone after the muscles get used to their new location and new purposes. Tank’s a big dog, 125 pounds before surgery, and he’s having a hard time learning how to reposition himself once laid down. He’ll get good and asleep and lay all the way on his good side. Normally he would use the leg that is gone to get momentum or to pull himself upright. That was when he was getting the pain, so once we positioned him upright, the pain would subside. I think that in part because of that pain, plus just improving his moving skills, we didn’t have one incident with the pain at all yesterday.

We did have another incident though. I was in my office working and all the dogs were in the living room with my daughter. Tank had somehow got himself in a position where he could scratch his incision with his back leg! My daughter called me in there when the blood started seeping thru his t-shirt. He had popped a staple out, I got the bleeding stopped pretty easily. I tried to put wound closures on it, but there was too much fur. I’ve had a few major surgeries myself, so I have plenty of wound care items, so I found a surgical bandage that had strong enough adhesive on each side to stay in place. I cut it down, covered it, and that was the end of that, crisis absolved!

Tank has an appointment on the 27th with the Oncologist, at that time they will also pull the staples. The surgeon was able to tell us that he felt we will be able to tell us that we should feel positive that we will be able to keep Tank comfortable with treatment and we were on the right track. So I will take that positively!

We did make the decision as a family to stay home on Christmas, we normally go to my parent’s for the day. None of us feel comfortable leaving Tank for any length of time. My children are adults and we are all of the opinion that all we want for Christmas is Tank, so we’re good with that. We will all stay with him and that will be perfect!