My week of woe had just ended that Thursday night sleeping in my own bed.
Beth who’d had Friday scheduled off to take care of me had had an appointment for Grace’s pinkie.
Grace’s pinkie kept getting infected and the toe would get rock hard and the base of the nail started seeping pus. Well, it was swollen again this week and although we’d had her on courses of antibiotics on and off all summer into the fall. It would get better and then, swollen again. I’d cut the nail as short as I could. (Apparently too short, bled all over the place.) Well, it was time for some serious x-rays.
So, Beth had run Grace over to the vet (about a mile away) while I was barely out of bed. I called her and said, I WANT TO BE THERE FOR ANY DECISIONS! Damn good thing. The doc was doing the x-ray while Beth zoomed back to pick me up and we came back to a vet saying, “this is cancer” “the toe must come off” “we can do it next Wednesday”.
I must have come off a tad arrogant, but I was on my cell phone calling the best orthopedic dog surgeon in the east coast before she was even finished. Dr Dietrich Franczuski at the VRC in Frazier PA. Their response. Has she eaten today? No!? Get her here before 11:30 and we can do it today.
Insert bat outta hell driving for 40 minutes here.
A hour or so later we were waiting for the Doc, his diagnosis, not cancer. Infection, serious enough to require removing all of the bones you see on the right side of the displayed xray. From pinkie to wrist. Gotta be done. I can’t put a perfectly happy pup down (Let’s think for a moment, Grace, at age 12, is way past her expected life expectancy, by several years!) for having a infected pinkie. And the cost, half today – $1100, second half balance tomorrow. Jump ahead, the total was $2098. Mysterious line item in the bill was a $400 discount. Grace must have gained friends back there in the back rooms of the VRC.
Saturday we picked her up. And well, this is picked up from my Flickr page but here goes:
In the car:
Waiting waiting waiting.
Boom, she wants to get outta here.
Greeting with mom.
I have not taken any pictures today but it has been sad. She has no appetite or any will to do anything but lay like a lump on the floor in the living room.