Hammer update
20-Aug-03
Hammer is limping heavily on his right front foot. The left front and right rear feet and legs are very swollen as well, but he is obviously experiencing a lot of discomfort on the right front. I felt it up a bit, and noticed a bony protrusion under where the IV catheter was. I’m thinking bone spur or similar, though he does not yelp when I touch it, so it’s not broken or fractured (I think– he’s pretty good at staying calm when I check him out, so he might not yelp in those cases).
He also has no strength in his back legs right now, though that might be nerve related. He does yelp and complain when we lift him into the car– which is great, because it’s normal for him, but kind of horrible to hear when you’re trying to get him into a car to go to the vet or to work.
John took him to work this morning. He used the minivan, so Hammer wouldn’t have far to go up. We still ended up lifting his rear end. I think he’d do fine if his rear end could just push him a little bit more than it does now.
Physical therapy might be in order, when he’s feeling a bit better. Also, I’m going to start him on Cosequin today– it’s glucosamine and helps joint health and arthritis. It’s good stuff, gave Harry an extra 6 months of comfort at the end of his life. And it doesn’t cause stomach discomfort, ulcers, or dilute the blood, which is good. One problem with pain killers is that they all have the potential for ulcerations (rimadyl), or they dilute the blood (asprin), if they’re not outright toxic (ibuprofen). Right now, he needs to stay away from anything that might unbalance this very slow healing process, and painkillers might do those things.
The vet can’t schedule him in until Friday. Which I think sucks, because this is a dog who had a life-threatening emergency over the weekend, and is now experiencing a lot of pain that I really want to manage befoer it unduly stresses him and causes problems. Make an allowance, folks.
In the new-cell-phone territory: a) I can receive pics on my cell phone (email them as attachments and they show up)– so I have the good picture of Allegro on my phone now. b) There seems to be a bit of dark “fringe” on the edge of pictures taken with the phones. It’s much more noticeable in my phone than in John’s. I’m going to call Verizon and see if I should exchange the phone or if I just shouldn’t bother. It annoys me that there’s this whole band on the side of the phone (about 1/8 of the whole left side of the picture) where it’s just very dark.