Pray for Bubby

The last 24 hours has been some of the worst hours of my life thus far.  I have spent most of them crying and the rest of them praying for my poor baby Bubby.  I'm starting to cry just writing this.  For the last week or so, Bubby has been having his back troubles that he has had periodically for the last couple years.  He has been to the vet many times for it and typically the medication we have for him works great.  This time was different.  It wasn't the miracle drug that it has been in the past and he was getting worse, not better.  Until last night, though, he was acting the same as he does every other time.  When it's really bad, he won't lay down, so he just wanders around the house with his tail down and it is truly heart-breaking.  A couple nights ago, he wouldn't lay down to go to bed, so he just stood by our bedroom door and cried.  I didn't know what to do, so I brought him downstairs and I slept (hardly) on the couch and after wandering around for what seemed like forever, he finally laid down and feel asleep.  Then, last night, things got much worse.  He woke up from a short nap and he came into the family room stumbling from side to side.  He kept falling from side to side and I started freaking out.  We watched him for a minute and then carried him outside and he could hardly walk.  He couldn't hold his butt off the ground to go to the bathroom and his back left leg kept collapsing under him causing him to fall over.  I immediately called my mom and told her to get over here and that I needed to take Bubby to the hospital.  It was about 11:00 by the time we got the hospital in Green, where we have taken our dogs since they were babies, and by that time, Bubby had lost almost all motor functions from the middle of his back to his two hind legs.  The vet told us that it looked like a ruptured disk in his back and said that he needed surgery right away - but they didn't do it there, so we drove up to one of the best animal hospitals in the area and they took him as soon as we got there, but the surgeons weren't in until this morning, so they kept him overnight and told me that they would call me in the morning and let me know what they were going to do.  Mom and I were there until 2:30 am getting the payment set up - which is roughly $4500 if nothing goes wrong - and waiting for the doctor to do their evaluation and then we went back to say bye to him - which was one of the worst things I've ever had to do.

I have literally been sick all day today waiting for status updates.  The first update came at about 8:30 this morning and they told me that his blood work was good, so he was a candidate for anesthesia, so they were going to put him under and do an MRI.  The MRI showed that he actually had a severe slipped disk and that he needed to be taken to surgery right then.  The surgery took a couple hours and I was in full panic mode the entire time.  Thankfully, the surgeon updated me as soon as he was done and said that the surgery went really well, but Bubby was still out.  He said that the other doctor would call me after he woke up from the anesthesia - which I was also scared about because I got the whole "There's always a chance that there could be complications with the anesthesia..." talk earlier today.  I waited a couple hours and still hadn't heard from them, so I called just to make sure he was up.  Thankfully, he was awake and his breathing tube had been taken out.  The doctor said he would call and update me again before he left for the day.

Around 7:00, the doctor called and said Bubby was doing okay, but that he doesn't do any assessments until the day after surgery, so he still didn't know much.  He said that Bubby still wasn't able to move his back left leg, but that we won't know if the surgery worked for a couple weeks.  We knew going into the surgery that there was only about a 60% chance that it would fix his problem, which means that he may not regain motor functions of his lower body - aka paralyzed, but we are trying to hope for the best.  He is going to have a long and hard recovery process and they said that wherever he is at 6 months post-surgery will be his permanent state.

They are going to give me another update in the morning and we are going to visit him tomorrow.  I am going to be such a wreck leaving him there after our visit, but I just have to see him.  We aren't sure yet when we will be able to bring him home, but we are hoping that it will be in a couple days.  As awful as this is and as scared as I am that he won't regain functionality of his back legs, I'm just so thankful that he made it through the surgery okay and I can't wait to have him home.