Well another bad night, around 5am ronnie was awake and panting clearly in pain, he didn't settle and seemed really unhappy so he got his meds a lot earlier and he had gabapentin and codeine at 5:30am and at 8am he had meloxicam with his food which he ate, but refused to get up and go to the bowl so i had to bring it to him. New levels of lethargy i hadn't seen before and i still don't think he's drinking enough so we are going to the vet shortly. 

temperature readings from this morning;

7am 104.1 PANIC

7:30 103.6 slightly calmer

8 103.6

8:30 102.5 looks promising

9 103.4

10 103.6

11 103.3

So the 8:30 reading aside, we have a 4 hour average of around 103.5 so I'm going to ask for a med review and blood tests for infection and see if line fluids are benficial

more to follow...

OK the vet has just called and our survey says...... no white blood cell increase, positive news, the tests where all unremarkable with no evidence of anything causes a concern, the only slight increase over usual levels was cholesterol and ALP and the kidney and liver function don't have corresponding concerns to explain the ALP increase so most likely due to bone turnover and the arthritis discovered during the initial CT. 

So she has ruled out infection unless on the outside chance this is early presentation of sepsis, but she says this late post surgery, with no physical or chemical markers backing this up, its unlikely. 

The only thing she is yet to do is discuss the pain management with the surgery team which she is doing when they get back in touch this afternoon. She says in terms of options they have started him in the middle really at 300mg gabapentin twice a day and 400mg is a possibility, but more likely is that she will change out the generic 400mg paracetomol/9mg codeine half a tablet 3 times a day for tramadol.

I'm going to monitor his temperature every few hours and see if it improves, still around the low 103's

will report back more when i get the call.

OK back home, the vet feels that while it is a lot more inflamed around the incision that it still looks completely clean with no sign of infection, and that it could just be muscular as yesterday was the most active day he has had with trips to the vet and a few visits to the house from friends on top of the general breaks in the yard for pees and poops. 

However she isn't happy with the elevated temp, although he read half a degree less in the vets office than yesterday and he has had no meloxicam today which we know will bring down inflammation and temperature. 

That being said the vet team is excellent so she wanted to start a 7 day course of antibiotics regardless as a 'safety belt' to everything else so prescribed synuclav which i believe is an alternate brand of Synulox, which google tells me is....

'Synulox is the most commonly used antibiotic for dogs and cats in the UK. It contains amoxycillin and clavulanic acid which act together to provide a safe and effective antibiotic with activity against a wide range of bacteria.'

So we're now back home and he has just inhaled a bowl of food and a full bowl of water (again still no diarrhea vomiting or dehydration/ starvation? whats wrong with you ronnie!!!) and he had a cocktail of meloxicam, codeine, gabapentin and the anti biotics over the course of 20 mins with plenty of peanut butter to help them down.

He will bascially just rest and not move the rest of the day and i will check temps every few hours and see how the day goes. If he is still reading 103.5+ by 5pm I'm to call the vet back as she isnt happy with the longer term effects of a fever such as this. 

good idea on the pro biotic i will see if i can source one locally.

Heres the log so far today

meds at 9:20am after the vet, meloxicam, gabapentin, codeine and anti-biotics.

11:20  - 101.66 F / 38.7 C

13:20 - 103.10 F / 39.5 C

15:20 - 102.74 F / 39.3 C

codeine at 15:20 and the 17:20 numbers to follow later, but so far its more positive certainly, the first reading after the morning meds and a few hours heavy sleep was obviously an amazing number i was happy to see, the lunchtime number crept up a little however that was taken after he had hopped off the couch gone for pees and poops, hopped around a fair bit (maybe a little too much) and then drank a bunch of water and eaten some more food. The average of all of these numbers is obviously the high 102's which is straddling the upper range of normal and fever, but either way its a good 1 degree on average less than yesterday so im pleased about that.