May 9th, 2020

I realize my last post left our situation sounding a little hopeless. I have reflected over the past week + and have come to some realizations.

Although Akeela has to be medicated every 4 hours and likely will be for the rest of her life, I am lucky that she is still alive. I feel fortunate that she can go 90% of the time without being in pain. Akeela now only yelps once a day – maybe once every other day. She also stopped wetting the bed. Both major wins in my book.

Yes, she isn’t living the maximum quality of life that I was hoping for – or expecting, based on what the vets told me pre-surgery …. but she is alive, and her suffering is now at a minimum. Unless the Dog Gods throw us another unexpected curve ball, I finally feel like we have a shot at a successful recovery.

Even to this day, it is discouraging to see the success stories of other dogs… the ones where dogs recover after 2 weeks. It was aggravating that every veterinary professional I spoke with assured me pre-surgery that she would have a seamless recovery. It was overwhelmingly frustrating when nobody could tell me why Akeela wasn’t recovering correctly – and was left in unbearable pain for 2 weeks straight.

You never really hear about the dogs who don’t recover, or who have a challenging time with it. And that’s why I started this blog. Our journey was completely different than what I ever imagined. I think it’s important for people to know that not all dogs recover the same way. And having an amputation done may cause unexpected complications on other parts of their body. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a solution. And it definitely doesn’t mean that your only option is euthanasia.

I admit .. I filled out the tripawds satisfaction survey a few weeks back and noted that if I had the choice of a do-over, I wouldn’t have proceeded with the operation. But sitting here at 7.5 weeks and knowing what I know now … and weighing all the considerations … I am glad I moved forward with the operation.

If we had not operated, we ran the risk of having a pathologic fracture in her arm at any time. And that would have created an emergency situation. So at least I can be at ease knowing that I did help prevent her from being in that unnecessary pain. Removing her arm amplified other issues that she had, and that I didn’t know about. But if I hadn’t moved forward with the elective surgery 7.5 weeks ago, our post-surgery recovery would have been just as dramatic and traumatizing, but she would have also had to experience the trauma of her leg shattering beforehand.

It took me a long time to come to terms with this, and I’ve had to hear it myself a half dozen times to actually believe it … but I did make the right choice by having Akeela’s leg removed.

I have had a couple people reach out to me this week and thank me for the blog that I’ve created for Akeela. It brings tears to my eyes knowing that our story is helping other tripawd-parents (or soon-to-be tripawd-parents). That is the entire reason I wanted to make our journey public. It sucks that Akeela had such a horrible recovery. I hadn’t read any stories of dogs who suffered like she did, so I thought that we were alone. But I am happy to know that our journey can at least be used as an example for others.

Having made our story public, I am now hearing from other families who DID have similar (though maybe not quite as traumatic) experiences as us. Why aren’t these complications more publicly known? I do truly believe there is a disconnect between the Surgeon/Oncologist perception of recovery vs what some dogs actually experience. I think that they should be able to provide you with resources and information to help through the process if your dog doesn’t experience a seamless recovery. Or even warn you about the potential recovery complications before the surgery. Do they just not hear about them? Though our Oncologist is absolutely stellar in so many aspects (specifically the Longmont office), we did not have the support we needed. I just feel so fortunate to have found the Tripawds Community, because without them – who knows where we would be.

So the best I can do is to continue updating our blog with Akeela’s story and hope that we can be a resource for dogs who are struggling like we did.