I feel like I just won’t ever forget this  day. We went to see Dr. Hewitt,  which is our orthopedic surgeon who  we had spoken to when we thought  Eva might potentially need a TPLO  surgery conducted. I thought we  were going so she could tell me they  had to cut out a bunch of Mush’s  muscle and they were gonna also do  a TPLO because they were in there  and I was gonna have to argue that we still couldn’t get a cranial drawer and my dog is young and blah blah. I didn’t want a big incision.

I was completely jarred.

Dr. Hewitt had the x-rays the day they were taken. She said she thought they had mistakenly sent her someone else’s. There’s no way this could be the same dog that she saw just about two months ago.

Dr. Hewitt said the mass on Eva’s knee from the radiograph was definitely a bony tumor. Great. Part of me feels like I knew it all along, so what inappropriate reaction do I have? I start laughing. Fantastic.

Of course it is…

So now what? Can we cut it out? She said, “well,” and I just laughed, I could just feel it coming. I knew they were taking Eva’s leg. But what’s weird about all this is from the moment she was toe touching, I knew. In my mind I knew the whole time. I had already come well to terms with it in my mind I think and as I sit here almost 15 hours from the time I brought her home post amputation, I have still not cried one time since they told me what was happening. On May 28th, the day of the actual surgery, I spent a lot of time with family and friends. I went to a local aquarium and spent time crawling in all of the little kid tubes as an adult and just tried to focus on other things.

But enough about me.

They gave us some Cerenia the night before because of the morphine used in the amp surgery. It made her so ridiculously knocked out. We definitely will give her half dosage if we ever need to use that stuff again. I mean she was like, cold and fairly unresponsive. To be completely honest, I held her all night (she usually cuddles anyways so she wasn’t upset) and told myself when I fell asleep that when I woke up, she may very well not be breathing in my arms. I was prepared and was saying goodbye until I fell asleep holding her.

The morning of her surgery she was sick. When we woke up, it was two hours before she was to be dropped off and we woke up because she just laid in bed whimpering. She does the high pitch exhale breath cry thing and even when it’s so quiet, it immediately wakes me up because I just have that crazy instinct with her. She was so uncomfortable. She couldn’t do anything comfortably at all. For two hours we were miserable. I mean, things had been hard the last two weeks or so because she would wake up all through the night but I had attributed that to her urinary food that made her drink a lot more water. I figured that’s why she wanted to go stand outside for a bit, pee a drop and then come back in. Really she was just restless and in pain. But none of that compared to how bad she was before I dropped her off for surgery. She was absolutely horrible. It broke my heart.

I took a moment to paint her toenails orange on her right side.

Her surgery took around two and a half hours and the surgeon regarded it as “uneventful.” She said Eva was doing great in the hospital except not eating- which I wasn’t terribly surprised of considering the fact that she was pretty uninterested in eating from anyone besides me for the last couple weeks. We had gotten her back to the same amount of food she was eating prior to her hospitalization only a couple days before her surgery so it was sort of really bad timing for that stuff anyways. Besides, a dog that isn’t half as active as she usually has been isn’t going to nor does she need to eat as much as she’s used to. We still don’t know WHAT that thing is in her knee, or her former knee. They sent the entire leg out for testing, I know we’re all on pins and needles hoping it isn’t OS, but no matter the circumstances I have a strange feeling that E is gonna beat the odds. They said she was laying around. Quiet. Pouting basically unless someone would come rub her ears. I wish I could just lay next to her.

But then today came!

They called this morning to let me know I was able to bring her home. Imagine that. Wednesday I find out she’s got to have a leg removed and Friday she’s laying in bed with me again. They brought her through the doors to see me and that dummy was so happy! I was so happy to see her I wasn’t even scared of the nub. I was worried that it might make me sick (I know I haven’t really delved into explaining E and I’s relationship but I’ve had her since she was three weeks old and if you try to tell me I didn’t birth her myself you’re in for an earful) or that I would stare at it and make her nervous because she’s uncomfortably receptive to my emotions as an alert emotional support dog. I heard the tech say “I know, you wanna see mama!” and I got so excited and she came in the room and I just dropped to the floor for my dog bath and she was wagging her tail so hard and so happy and walking so beautiful. She walked great. Did I say that?! We went outside because my dad pulled the big truck around and I had the tech come outside to make sure I could appropriately handle Eva on my own; I wanted that reassurance in case I touched her in a painful way or in a way that might increase her bruising later on.

My dog has three legs! She’s so much happier than she was the day before her surgery. I really think that if we hadn’t figured this all out by now, the day of her surgery would’ve been the day I would’ve had to have said goodbye because she was crying from 5am until we got into the car at 7 to drive the hour long trip to the surgeons office. When she got home she wanted to play a little bit with a new toy I bought her and she ate a couple crunchies (our word for her hard food kibble, kind of a way we started helping getting her to eat again after her overdose.) When she was at the vet today before I picked her up they were able to give her some chicken because the lady played a little game with her and she was really into it haha. Sounds like my Mushy. When she came home she’s been kinda sleepy but we haven’t had good sleep in months because she was always so uncomfortable, plus she’s on good medicine for the pain as her 24 hour local analgesic is starting to wear off. I am so happy to have her home and pain free, even if the results of this arduous journey didn’t end up where we thought they would (two days ago I thought they could give me a shot to fix her leg….) but I just have this crazy feeling that she’s really gonna do great, even if the path results come back and aren’t the most encouraging. She’s got so much fight in her, it’s so beautiful. I have never been so inspired by something, and she’s my own baby mush!!!

so happy, so comfortable. this is the best she’s slept in months. :’)
I already know that even if she only has a little while left, this was the best thing for her.

she’s my hero <3