Update on Grace: She’s 42 hours post op and I was able to bring her home last night. Her red blood cells, blood volume, platelets etc and still horribly low (the graph on the blood test result form is damn scary to look at) so she’s going to have a slow recovery. She has a fentanyl patch on and pretty much hadn’t slept prior to bring her home. An hour after coming home she was sooo deeply asleep and drugged it took a LOT of shaking and squeezing between pads very hard and shouting and panicking to get a response from her. I thought she had collapsed and was about to pick her up somehow (she’s heavy!) and dash her to the emergency vet when she opened her eyes and raised her head. Oh my gosh, she gave me such a fright!!! Unfortunately she then went on to not sleep most of the night, lots of vocalizing and a bit of crying. Had her on her big orthopaedic bed beside me on my bed and just stoked and talked to her throughout the night. I’m pooped!
I’m 99% sure she’s nauseated, which fentanyl can do, and all I can get into her is some chicken bone broth licked off my fingers. I’m hoping she gets a bit of an appetite today. She needs high quality nutrition to help her body start making all the blood cells she has lost. I have beef liver, some ground beef, chicken broth with chicken meat in it all ready to go, I just need her to start eating.
Dogs can live without a spleen, as humans can, but with some difficulties. Not serious, apart from being somewhat immunocompromised, but ones I’ll need to keep on top of. All I need is for her histology report to say she has no cancer and we’ll do fine. One super hopeful piece of news is the vet saw no evidence of metastatic spread anywhere in her abdomen, which she checked thoroughly when making sure there were no other sources of bleeding. In fact she said Grace’s insides looked pristine! That’s a mostly raw fed dog for ya! And when not eating raw meat she has grain free high quality kibble, full of ingredients dogs should eat, and none they shouldn’t. Never had a sick day in her life til this major oops, beautiful coat, lots of energy and not a single white hair on her face at age 11! Best guess is she’s a german shepherd, border collie, retriever mix. Beautiful looking girl.
As for me, apart from being pooped, I ducked into the supermarket and chinese grocer yesterday to grab a few things for my friend and saw a ton of meat on special - lamb shoulder chops, rump steak, beef liver, beef kidneys, lamb liver, manuka smoked bacon (0.4 carbs per 100 grams woot), brisket pieces, pork shin slices, pork loin chops and who knows what else! My freezer is 112cm by 64cm by 82 cm and it’s sooooo full I can’t fit another thing in it! Granted there are 9 or so bags of frozen veg (perfect for making the doggos some home made food, b/c I’m sure not eating them!) and a few loaves of bread and some boxes of crumbed fish fillets buried somewhere at the bottom, but the rest is MEAT! Meat, meat and more meat. So typical of me, if I do something I tend to DO IT lol
Thanks for the thoughts and well wishes re Grace. I’ll keep you all posted.
that was tricky but I was determined)! 1200 kcal or less for 2 days in row and on the third, I am still okay until lunchtime. But I actually expect myself to eat more now… I never functioned well below 1600, 1-2 odd days happened but no more.
). I still am unable to have proper hunger, I had some borderline hunger only so I waited. But after 2 hours I decided to have dinner (between 9 and 10pm)… Had more of the usual so eggs and pork, what else? But a little cheese too. I ended up a bit below 2000 kcal and at 150g protein, a proper amount of meat, 10 yolks… It’s fine except I am too full. So I shouldn’t eat until satiation for my second, late meal… It’s my normal behaviour but I try to change.