Sorry, it's kinda long...

Zuzu must really like her new vet, she went in twice today!
We had an appt scheduled for late evening to take a look at a suspicious spot on her incision. Mid afternoon I notice her ankle is swollen again, only much bigger this time. Then I noticed her foot was swollen too- almost twice the normal size, and they were pretty close to normal that morning, so I called my wife and she came home from work so we could take her in. I will totally admit I was kinda freaking out- jumping to the worst conclusion of course.

We get to the vet and they take her back and take a look at things, bring her back out and tell us all looks good, the swelling is pretty normal and will go away on its own and there's no sign of infection.
Yay, we were just over reacting.

While we were there I mention that she seems to be having pain about 8 hours after her carprofen ( she gets it every 12 hours) so I ask if we can switch to every 8 hours. Doc decided she wants to add tramadol, to be taken 6 hours after carprofen.

We get home and I give her some tramadol.
She got a little whiny after about a half hour, but really wasn't too bad. A little bit longer and she's resting by my feet in her spot against the couch. She's out pretty good when there's a knock on the door, up she springs from laying flat on her belly in a drug induced state to being up on all 4 in a split second and charging towards the door. We have more visitors at " hotel Amy" and she's been just barking, not completely freaking out like this- thanks tramadol!

After I get rid of the solicitor I get her to come lay back down and go to check for drainage, as it's been pretty consistent upon standing and walking.

Only this time there's more than just some drainage, there's a gap between her skin, about 3mm wide and about 4mm long. Well, s**t! Text my wife, whose gone back to work and isn't planning on being home for about another hour, that I was pretty sure zuzu just popped a stitch. Send her the picture and she rushes home and we give the vet a call- yep they want us to come in. Luckily our vet is open till 7, since by now it was around 6:30. We only live about 5 minutes away, so we rushed right over.
Yup, sure enough she popped a stitch. They were worried it was gonna be a big wound since they did a continuous stitch during surgery, but luckily we got her in quick enough and kept her still enough that only one came out. Doc tied the surrounding stitches off so they didn't unravel and put in a few staples. So now zuzu is sporting some bling, in the form of 4 staples. Guess she just wanted piercings like mommies huh?
We hope we can get through the next week without having to make any unscheduled visits. We go in next Wednesday to see if sutures are ready to come out.
Ugh, what a day!

Ok I guess I'll start with the good news...
Biopsy results came back, we got great margins around but the lab would have liked better deep margins, but we still did pretty good there. Definite soft tissue sarcoma, they're now saying it looks more like a nerve sheath tumor, low grade.
Dr B. Says this is pretty good news as it's one of the slower growing cancers and shouldn't have any risk of spreading. She thinks it's definitely possible for Zuzu to outlive any reoccurrence but is confident that if there's regrowth we can go in as soon as we notice it and have the chance of getting full margins and better closure than this time, but no matter what she gets to keep the leg so that's great news!

Now, the not so good news...
Last night while I was sleeping Zuzu laid on her bad side and popped the skin. *Sigh* took her in and it looks like she's getting an infection, so we got some meds. They middle part of her incision ( the spot that's over the knee) looks like crap. Doc says we're going to lose about a quarter size amount of skin from that area, but not to freak out cuz as soon as the new skin comes in that's gonna heal really nicely.

I wish she would stop bending her knee, every time she does it makes that hole open up bigger and it's really freaking me out.

If we don't notice a significant improvement in the color of her discharge by Monday, we're to give them a call and come back in.

Zuzu's been whining non stop since we got home. This is so hard to deal with. It's so hard knowing that what we did is causing her pain, especially when her pain was no where near this bad before surgery.
I know once things are healed and she's frolicking around again, pain free, that it'll all be worth it and we'll be exceedingly happy for doing this, but damn if it's not hard to get to that point.

Thank you everyone for your continued support, y'all are amazing people.

Oh, I also forgot to mention her swelling has dramatically decreased! Still a little swollen in the ankle, but it is so so so much better than it was.

I don't think adding gaba would necessarily be beneficial as I don't think it's nerve pain going on.
Since she was doing a lot better before the infection I'm leaning towards the increased pain being from that, and hopefully the antibiotics will help. Her gait also changed as of this am and doc is pretty sure it's from the pain from infection. I'll give it a few days and go from there. She also was late on meds as we were sitting in the vets office when it was med time.

The tramadol has definitely been helping and she's responding really well to it, but I do think it starts to wear off before her next dose. She's only been on it for 2 days and the first day it seemed to be less noticable, so again, I'm thinking it's mostly this infection but if I need to I'll call and see if we can adjust anything.
Right now she gets carprofen 50mg every 12 hrs,tramadol 50mg 2x a day, to be given 6hrs after the carprofen and now amoxicillin 500mg every 12 hours.

She was off antibiotics for 2 days and this nasty bugger showed it's ugly head. I'm trying not to jump to worst conclusion about the infection and keep telling myself it happens, even in the absolute best of closures. Sometimes I hate having medical knowledge!

Ashley

Oh, should I move this to another forum since we're past diagnosis phase?