It’s all about the women...

March 2, 2012

Peoria, AZ

Nothing wrong with that!  The past few weeks have been about Geri and Maya Lynn.  Geri’s great and Maya’s better -- now.

To begin with, we celebrated our anniversary and Geri’s birthday on the 16th and 17th, respectively.  It was relatively low-key this year, especially since her key present (deferred all the way from Christmas, for crying out loud) -- a new recliner -- has finally been selected but is being built and won’t be here until late-March.  I can sense a whole living room do-over in my future at some point, but that’s OK...

Anyway, we did a little birthday lunch at Olive Garden and were invited for a nice dinner at Ana & Larry’s, so we did get a little celebrating in.  A bouquet arrived from Connecticut, and all was well with the world.

No sooner was the celebrating over than our attention turned to Maya Lynn, our 8-year old Silkie Terrier.  She had a tumor in her right rear flank, and it had to come out as the biopsy showed evidence of Stage 2 MAST Cell activity.  It started out about 1cm in size, but a round of steroidal treatment shrunk it to about half the initial size.  Surgery was scheduled for February 20th, as soon as she finished with the Prednisolone (easier metabolized form of Prednisone) treatment.

As is common in veterinary medicine, once they have you “in the shop”, anything on the “watch list” is fair game.  In Maya's case, she had a couple of skin cysts that needed to be frozen off and hadn’t ever had a “dental” under anesthesia, so she was in for a full day.  We dropped her off at 7:30 AM (aka “oh-dark-thirty” for those of us who aren’t early risers).

We went to pick her up around 4:00 PM, with some degree of trepidation.  Geri remembers well how weak and wobbly she was after she came home from being “fixed” at six months.  Of course, that story always seems to involve references to me being away on a business trip at the time...

Anyway, you wouldn’t have known she had surgery when we picked her up.  She was wide awake and pulling on the leash to get to us, and then get to the door.  They said she did well except for fighting the anesthesia like a trouper.  In addition to the planned procedures, she ended up having a few loose teeth removed.  All in all, everything looked OK, pending pathology reports.

We got her meds (antibiotic and pain) and headed for home.  The first few days were a bit of a struggle, since she needed to leave the incision areas alone of course.  She didn’t take well to the “cone of shame”, just sitting in one place and crying at length.  She also didn’t take well to the combination of the meds, making night time not sleep time - for anyone.  If Maya’s up, everyone’s up!

After a couple of days (and sleepless nights), things settled down.  We went back this week to have stitches and staples removed (actually twice, since they missed a staple the first time), and she’s healed up well.  We’ll give it another week or so before getting her to the groomer, but otherwise she’s good to go!