She was home...for a while.

Here's our brave girl.

She's had a rough go of things. So have her mums.

She was very happy to go home yesterday, and walked herself out to the car. Getting her in the car was another story...she screamed. It is very hard to lift her without hurting her, but it's the only way to get her in and out of the car and up stairs. We are glad she's "only" 45lbs...

She was even more happy to be carried into the house, so happy to be home...big kisses for kim, tail wags for all the cats, and peed over my arm and onto my shoe as a display of her undying affection for Gracie. We got her settled in her old "play room", the downstairs bathroom, gave her some food and her meds, and settled in. Or tried to. She was, and continued to be, quite restless, having trouble finding a comfy place to settle down for any extended period of time.

We managed to get out for a bathroom break, then upstairs to bed...she settled reasonably well. But we awoke from a dead sleep with out hearts in our throats...the was screaming in pain. She had rolled onto her "bad" side and didn't seem to know how to roll back. Leapt of of bed, repositioned her, soothed her until she calmed down. Lots of heavy breathing and whining all night...and at least two more heart-lurching screaming episodes, only without an obvious reason for them. All we could do was wait it out.

She was in good spirits this morning, despite everything, and walked herself down the stairs and outside to go to the bathroom, but screamed after doing her business and refused to walk back into the house on her own.

Got her settled again in the house. She was calmer, but restless. I noticed that she had developed a firm bulge on her neck, under her duragesic patch (you can see it in the picture), then later another small bulge on her belly on the opposite side of the bandage. Another phone call to Dr. Sparling, and then another trip to the clinic ensued.

The bulges were buildups of fluid (blood mainly) from the surgery. Nothing life-threatening, but they needed to be drained. Dr. Sparling removed her bandage to see how things were looking under there, and drained the fluids. She handled it all very well.

The good news is, the incision is looking wonderful. HUGE, but really healthy and CLOSED, which is the most important part for me. It looks like a large backwards "L", about 7-8" in each direction, closed with sutures. I've looked at a LOT of incision pictures in the past few months, so this wasn't shocking to me. I was just happy to see the incision starting to heal well.

The crappy (well, sort of crappy) news is, we decided the best thing for her would be to stay at the hospital for a few more days. They will monitor the fluid buildup closely, perhaps put in a drain, rebandage her, and give her different pain medication. This will also give her the opportunity to stay calm and quiet...no cats or mums or Gracies to cause distraction. This will give her mums a much-needed opportunity to breathe, let someone else take care of her for a while, and get some desperately-needed sleep. We will be better able to cope with the rest of her recovery if we are rested and clear-headed.

This is a whirlwind, and very trying. But we are fortunate to have a lot of people supporting us through this ordeal.