Well, there's never a dull moment at Crest Avenue and last week was no exception. Baxter had not been feeling well over the last week. He was not himself over the long Thanksgiving weekend. He seemed lethargic and just not his usual active self. He was eating but not at all playful. He would have breakfast or dinner and then crawl right back into his bed. Last Thursday I took him to the vet to see if we could find out what was going on. I found two ticks on him in late summer and even though I removed them and treated the bite area with alcohol, I was concerned that he contracted some tick-borne illness. So the vet did a full work up of his blood and also did a few neurological tests. These consisted of him walking across a flat surface on each of his feet, one at a time. Then the same exercise on two feet on each side of his body. He passed all these tests with flying colors. But he seemed a little sensitive to touch, so they prescribed MetaCam which is an analgesic/anti-inflammatory that is a liquid that is given orally once per day. He got his first dose when we got home on Thursday morning and I spent the rest of the day with him just kind of laying around watching tv. On Friday morning he had breakfast and another dose of MetaCam. I noticed that he was a little wobbly in the rear - that his legs looked like they weren't working right. So I called the vet and said that something was wrong and we set up another appointment for him at 9:40 AM on Saturday. I initially thought the MetaCam had relaxed him so much that he was having trouble maneuvering around, sort of like when we take prescription pain medication. By Friday night he had lost the use of both back legs and was only able to get around by his two front legs. I cannot tell you how heart-wrenching it was to see this. We spent Friday night in bed and made our way to the vet on Saturday morning. Fortunately, the bloodwork all came back negative. So there was nothing wrong there. We tried the neurological tests again and today he was unable to perform any of the walking tasks. They took x-rays and thought they might see some problems along the spine and referred us to a neurologist and suggested we leave there and go immediately to the neurologist, which we did. After further exams and a CT Scan at the hospital, they discovered that one of his disks in his back had "exploded." He had surgery at 10:00 PM on Saturday night to correct the problem. The surgery took two hours. We received a phone call from the surgeon around 12:30 AM saying that it went well and that he expected a full recovery. Here I am with him yesterday holding a cold compress on his incision.
I called the hospital this morning and they informed me that he had a good night. Hopefully he will come home later today or tomorrow. We will have 4 - 6 weeks of limited movement and confinement to a cage so that the back can heal. It was a whirlwind of a weekend but we are so very, very happy that we caught this in time and got him into surgery quickly.
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