Woodstock Update – July 7th 2008

Hi Everyone, Woodstock here again.

First off: I would like to thank everyone who has sent me well wishes. I wanted to let you know I just completed another visit to my Vet about my leg recently and sad to report it wasn’t good. I’m once again back in another splint. The x-rays showed no improvement. My poor Mom is just beside herself as what to do next for me. See it’s an age thing, after all I’m 63 in human years and my poor old bones despite all the extra stuff Mom has done to help me, Is just not mending.

The Vet told my Mom that she had found out from the specialist and it seems they are all saying that the plate and screws that were put in almost 8 years ago is the problem and they have to come out. They are thinking that they are in the way of my broken bone and that’s why it’s not mending.

Now perhaps it may sound that simple, but my Mom and Dad don’t seem to think so. Keep in kind here that my leg has now been in one cast and three different splints over the past 15 weeks and it really hasn’t healed, despite all the extra calcium and herbal stuff I have been eating.

Now that plate and screws have been in there for a long time and one would think calcium fusion of the bone would occur around that stuff as well as tissue growth. So there is a change that the bone under that plate once they try to take it out could shatter.

OUCH! Make that Double OUCH!

If you ask me, after all it is MY leg! A lot of trauma to this old leg I would think, but what do I know I’m just a 4 pound dog!

Here’s what I heard Mom and Dad talking about. They feel as sad that it would be the best option to remove the lower half of my leg. Since there are no guarantees that my bone will mend even after they have taken out the old plate and screws providing all goes well with the removal. Plus they feel that there would be much less trauma to tissue and nerves. Oh, forgot to mention – so far the estimates have come in at $2,710 to remove the old plate and screws. Even if they can successfully remove the old hardware as I call it I could still be laid up for another 8 to 10 weeks of healing time. That is IF my leg heals!

So I started doing the math as my Mom did, that would be a total of about 25 weeks, a little over 6 months of not using my left leg. You have to ask… isn’t there atrophy (refers to the wasting or loss of muscle tissue resulting from disease or lack of use) an issue at this point? Unused muscles don’t work so well after this much time, one would think.

So would I just carry that leg for the rest of my life then? And would that be a good thing? It seems that my Vet don’t want to amputate my leg at this point because they say that 60 percent of a dogs weight is carried on their front legs and that might be put in undue stress on my one good leg that I will have left.

I wish I could speak human so I could ask them: Aren’t I carrying all that weight now on my good leg, not to mention the weight of this splint thing? Gee, couldn’t they just leave the old stuff and add new hardware (plate/screws) to where my leg is broken now?

Mom and Dad are still waiting on a couple of other surgical estimates but they are sure they will come in at about the same price or higher plus they still have some unanswered questions about this whole thing.

Well, there you have it. The gist of what is going on in my life and all I can say is if you have to break a bone try and do it when you are young and can mend quickly because when you are old it just doesn’t work so well.