Been a rough couple of weeks, and today is going to be even rougher...
One of our Whippets (Raven) has been through quite a lot recently, having tumor removed, leg problems, but over the last 2 weeks things have gotten much worse. She was at a point where she could barely walk, and was very unstable when she did manage to get on her feet. Took her to our normal vet last week who said this could be related to the tumor he removed a few weeks ago, could be from a stroke, or a number of other things but the only real way to tell is with an MRI. We were referred to a neurologist at another clinic, and saw them late last week.
We arranged for the MRI on Sunday and here she is in the waiting room - a bit stressed:
Sight hounds are always a bit of a challenge with anesthesia, and the fact she is 11 and has some heart issues makes things more complicated, but she came through it okay - on the way home:
Got the call on Tuesday that it was probably the best case scenario - it wasn't cancer or some disease, but a herniated disk, so there was a surgical option. We met with the surgeon yesterday, and went over the MRI - photos taken of the screen with my phone so not the best quality. The MRI itself is one used for research and used on humans during the week, so the poor quality is due to reflections from the screen, but here you can see the C6 disk is compressing her spinal cord:
In cross section you can see what the cord looks like just before the disk - looks good:
And right at the disk, the cord is very compressed:
Surgery will happen today, and there are many risks involved. They go in from the front of her throat, move everything aside, drill through some vertebrae to get at the disk and remove it. Had to decide on things like DNR and all that - hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
🙁
Not going to get much work done today...
