Puddin's Leg

The last weekend in November I was laying on the floor petting Puddin when I noticed this big "blister" type of thing on her leg.  It seemed to come out of no where and grew quickly.  It looked gross and it was definitely bothering her so we scheduled an appointment at the vet the next day.  We couldn't get in until 5 pm and after examining her, we left her at the vet that night so they could do surgery the next day, Nov. 29.  I was really nervous!  I also cried when I found out that the one doctor that I have not had a good experience with was the one who was actually going to do the surgery!  They put her under full anesthesia, removed the lump, and sent it off for a biopsy.  She came through surgery fine and the biopsy showed it was benign.  She has several lesions on her skin, particularly near the bottom of her legs, that continue to multiply, but we hadn't seen anything like this before.  The doctor actually believes both the lesions and this lump are caused by the heavy does of Atopica (cyclosporine) that Puddin has been taking for the last 2 1/2 years to combat the auto-immune disease she has which affects her platelets, called immune-mediated thrombocytopenia.  Ugh!  We can't win!  While she pulled through surgery just fine, the healing process has not gone so smoothly :(  And once again, they are blaming the slow healing on the meds, both the Atopica and the prednisone!

After surgery, our regular vet has taken back over and I have to say that she has been amazing though!  She always answers all of my questions right away, even on nights and weekends.  I have texted her so many photos of Puddin's leg asking about the healing process and what to do next.  She even brought some medicine from the animal hospital to her house for me to pick up on my way home from work one evening to save me another trip to her office which goes above and beyond!  The animal hospital is an hour and 20 minutes from our house, definitely not the most convenient vet, but the care is exceptional and that's why we go (and go...and go...and go...considering that Puddin has had a blood test every 2-4 weeks for the last 2+ years)!

Puddin wouldn't leave the area of the incision alone and even managed to pull out one of the inside stitches which was not good.  We have had her leg wrapped most days since she had surgery and just today does it actually look good!  Unfortunately, since surgery, she has also started having problems with the stairs :(  She seems nervous going up and she stumbled and fell a couple days in a row going down.  We left her downstairs for about a week, but she was miserable...crying and pacing which was heartbreaking.  She has always slept in our bedroom, so we started bringing her up again.  For another week or so after that Tracy would carry her down in the mornings.  She is going up and down on her own again now, but we have to monitor her very closely and try to be ready to catch her at any given time which makes me nervous!

I'm happy to say that we are finally getting there and have been able to leave her leg unwrapped for the last couple days (the last photo is from Dec. 21 and it looks even better than that now).  I truly hope she doesn't need to have any more surgeries in the future though!