koda & cancer pt.2: the surgery

after about a week of waiting, koda’s surgery day had arrived. she’d been fasting since midnight last night and she was so happy when i put on her leash… (i bet she thinks, “yay, walking!”). i dropped her off at the clinic at 10:30PM and gave her a good luck kiss.

taken right before leaving the house… she looked happy 🙂

aina and i picked her up at 6:30PM. she was already awake and, even though she looked a bit woozy from the anesthetic, she was very happy to see us. then, she turned around, showing us the incision…

the anesthetic was still in her system, thus the smile…

i gasped in horror. aina started to cry… the wound was huuuge! the doctor explained that they had to cut out a big chunk of her skin around the tumor itself, to anticipate the spread. so, the margin was wide. she said, “it’s a good thing that koda has a lot of extra skin around the area.” i wonder where were those skin came from…

the doctor said that koda’s anesthetic had not worn off, so she wasn’t in pain… yet. then i got a list of stuff to do in the next 3 days, 3 syringes of pain killer, some antibiotics and stuff. we all walked home slowly, and aina said, “binggi, judging from the size of the stitches, i’m pretty sure they cut open koda earlier…”

as soon as we got home, koda went to the bathroom and did #1 and #2 right away. good. and she went straight to her food bowl, finishing her meal… great!

although we still cringe upon seeing the wound…

it took her a while to find a comfortable sleeping position. she tried to lay down, but ended up on the wrong side and the blood was on the floor. ouch! and after that, it looks like she was scared to lay down. so, the poor dog tried to sleep standing up!

she also had a hard time going up and down the stairs, so we tried to avoid the stairs as much as possible. but when koda was in pain or feeling uncomfortable, all she wants is to be close to us. unlike most dogs, instead of staying in a dark corner by herself, she needs body contact.

so, after finding the right side to lay down, she climbed up the couch (with our help, because she couldn’t get up by herself), and slept with her collar on.

she woke up when ari came home, but was too weak to got off the couch. i guess by this time, her pain reliever was all gone and she was in a lot of pain. but she just had to live with it for tonight, because we were not allowed to give her another dose of pain reliever until tomorrow.

the girl was in a lot of pain 🙁

her face reminded us to the time she was spayed. the ears flopped down, the eyes were clouded and very watery. she looked sad and very groggy. she was in a lot of pain…

that night we decided to go to bed early. koda sleeps in our bed, between ari and i. even though the doctor suggested that she should be sleeping on her own (so that we don’t end up kicking her wound in our sleep or so that she wouldn’t stain our bed with her blood), it was almost impossible to get koda to sleep by herself tonight. even if we moved a foot away from her, she will wake up and limp to us just to get close.

we lifted her up the stairs to go to our room. as soon as she laid down on our bed, she fell asleep. she moved and whimpered a lot in her sleep, and every time she did that, ari and i woke up. we had very little sleep that night…