Ginger's story

Owner: Maryann Pagano E-mail: mpagano@isgny.com Date posted: January 20, 2001 We have a golden retriever named Ginger. She recently had TPLO surgey on her back right leg. We had come back from vacation in Nov. 2000 and she was limping a lot. About a week later, she could no longer put her leg down. The doctor took her right away and we found out she needed TPLO surgery. Ginger had her TPLO surgery on 12/19/00. She seemed to do much better then we did. We felt very bad for her. This website helped us a lot, prepare the house with baby gates, ramps, etc. We knew we had to keep her as still as possible after the surgey. Since we only have a 1 floor home, it was pretty easy. We built a ramp so she could go outside, and also gated off a section of the yard so she still had a place of her own. We had called the doctor about the swelling and also noticed this website talked about swelling, so I figured it was normal. Unfortunately, it was not. On Christmas Eve, her wound got a severe infection. We had come home on Christmas Eve to find blood all over the sheets and her leg. We tried to stop the bleeding, but we could not. We rushed her to the emergency vet, who said her fever was over 104 and that she had an infection. We had to leave her over night so the doctors could fight the infection and bring her fever down. Thank goodness our vet was available on Christmas day so we picked her up that morning from the emergency center and brought her to the surgeon. He drained her wound and bandaged her all up. In about a week, she seemed to be better. We had to clean the wound as well as take her temperature daily. I was so glad the surgeon said she was OK. Right now, we are about 31 days post surgery, and Ginger seems fine. It gets harder to keep them down, once they start to feel like themselves. I just hope at 8 weeks when we go back for the fist follow-up x-rays, Ginger is doing great!