Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Update on Neal

Neal's surgery was this morning and he seemed to tolerate the procedure well, woke up and was resting comfortably at the time Dr. Fuentes called. In addition to the rock, he had a piece of plastic in his upper small intestine. It was sharp and jagged and hard enough you could break it. Hard telling where he got this. Since the incident 2 years ago, we have been extremely diligent (apparently not enough) and as we worked on our lot here in Texas, took out smaller stone and put in larger rock just so he wouldn't do that. It was one of the "smaller" larger rocks. The vet is concerned about the intestine surgery as it is a source of bacteria, etc. She took some connective tissue from around the stomach and wrapped it around the sutured intestine and they will do the IV thing for a couple more days instead of giving him solid food. They will closely monitor his temp and probably do some injective seizure meds since he won't be getting his normal ones.
BUT, while she was in there, she saw multiple lesions on his liver. . .like little buttons on the surface of the liver and a different color. She said the liver felt good, but the lesions were definitely abnormal. She removed some for biopsy and we know they can be benign, as well as not. He did have some abnormal liver results in his bloodwork.

So now we wait and see how he recovers. He did well the last time, but that was 2 years ago. . . he is 13, and this time had the liver biopsy (ouch).

We will go see him tomorrow.

Till next time. . .

Dale

4 comments:

Jim said...

Hi Terry and Dale,

Happy to hear Neal came through surgery okay. Hoping he recovers nicely.

Jim

Unknown said...

Poor little guy; I hope he recovers well. He is so cute.
Sharon

Dale said...

Thanks, Jim. We're hoping for the same. He's an old dog, but acts much younger than his years.

Dale

Dale said...

Sharon, He is such a sweetie. He had a lot of swollen and inflamed tissue in the intestine. They are monitoring him closely for the next few days.

Dale