Surgery Day

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day…

8:00 a.m. — Just dropped Tessa off at the vet for her biopsy surgery. It was pretty rough. Poor thing shook like a leaf and whined the whole car ride to the vet. Then continued to shake nervously throughout the whole vet check-in process.

We had to hand her over and felt absolutely terrible about it. Sometimes it’s a blessing she has no idea what’s going on, and sometimes it sucks. We hate that she doesn’t understand that she’s there for her health, and that it’s only a few hours and we’ll be back to get her later today. It was heartbreaking to think that she may think we abandoned her.

11:22 a.m. — The doctor called to tell me that Tessa is out of surgery, is awake and doing well. He said that he was able to get a good piece of the lymph node to send to Albany for pathology. He said we may know by early to mid- next week. I’m not overly anxious to get the results back because I feel like all it will do is solidify what we already know. And then we will have to face the reality of the decision to treat or not to treat, and that sucks. (I feel like I have used the word “sucks” more times in the past week than I have in my whole life.)

Anyway, Tessa has apparently already been out for a bathroom break (haha), and will spend the next few hours being monitored and in recovery. Sounds like it was a smooth and easy surgery. I hope they are cuddling my baby for me. We were told this morning that she was going to be given a nice, fluffy fleece blanket to lounge on. I hope she’s actually able to get some rest.

We have a 4:00 p.m. discharge appointment to go and get her. I cannot wait. The afternoon cannot go by quickly enough.

2:28 p.m. — Nothing new to report, aside from the fact that this is the longest. day. ever. How is it not 4:00 yet?

7:00 p.m. — Tessa is at home and resting (for the most part). She is definitely out of it. When she’s not lying around sleeping, she’s slowly walking around aimlessly, not sure what she wants to do with herself. Poor thing.

I picked her up at the vet without incident. They gave me a few instructions, then brought her in for the reunion. She was excited and I couldn’t wait to get her home. My mom came by shortly after and just left a few minutes ago. She spent a lot of time snuggling a very drowsy Tessa.

Tess is still doing everything she normally does, except playing. She can jump on and off of the couch without problems, barking, etc. She just has really tired eyes. :)

Her incision is a little bit ugly, and her lymph node bump now looks bigger (I assume due to swelling). The one side of her neck is shaved, and a little section of one of her front legs (for the IV). All in all, she is doing well. I’m looking forward to spending the evening curled up on the couch with her.

7:37 p.m. — She just scratched her incision and made it bleed a little. Now we’re extra paranoid about her accidentally removing her stitches. Great fun.