Bailey's Saga or The Murphy's Law of Deployments

The original surgery

If you’re familiar at all with deployments, you know, if something will go wrong, it’ll go wrong during a deployment. The Mister’s other deployment, I temporarily lost my eyesight in my right eye. That’s real fun when you’re alone with two kids. This deployment, my dog Bailey has been keeping me stressed out.

On September 24^th, I took Bailey to the vet for a pre-spay checkup and to have one lump and two bumps checked out. One common health issue of Boxers is that they get skin bumps and lumps, some of which turn out to be cancer. One bump was nothing and the rather large lump under her front armpit was just a fatty cyst. However, the other bump had the vet worried that it was cancer. She recommended that it be removed and biopsied. Not wanting to take chances, I agreed to have this procedure done the same day Bailey got her spay.

September 28^th, I dropped Bailey off at the vet bright and early and scheduled to pick her up at 4:30 the same afternoon. Everything went off without a hitch. I was pretty shocked at the size of the incision where the bump was removed. It was the size of a pencil eraser yet the incision was about three inches long. When I picked her up, she was still recovering from the anesthesia and pain meds. She cracked the girls and I up running into things and leaving her tongue poking out of her mouth for several hours. She looked like she had partied hard the night before, lol.

It's hard to tell, but this was right after her 1st surgery. She's loopy here, lol.

On October 2^nd, I noticed that Bailey’s bump incision was looking kinda red and it was oozing more than it had been so I took her to the Pet ER to have her checked out. They said the incision actually looked pretty good but that I should make sure and keep her follow up appointment I had scheduled on October 8^th. By the time I got her into the vet on the 8^th, the incision was infected. Instead of getting her stitches removed, they sent me home with antibiotics and instructions to wash the area with a warm washcloth 2-4 times a day and to bring her back in on the 11^th for a recheck. However, I noticed on the 9^th that her incision had a gap in it about the size of a penny and whenever I applied pressure to wipe it with a washcloth, fluid flowed out of it to the point it was dripping on the floor (sorry, TMI, I know.) I don’t really consider myself to have a squeamish stomach, but this was pushing my limits. It was all I could do not to puke on the floor. So, I called the Pet ER and described what was going on. They told me to stop washing it and instead apply a warm washcloth inside of a ziplock bag as a warm compress. So I did this and by Sunday afternoon, her incision was almost completely open from end to end. By this point, I’d had enough and I trooped her to the Pet ER. After sitting in the waiting room for almost 2 hours, the vet finally looked at her and said that she needed another procedure. The infection wasn’t allowing her incision to heal and had caused it to gape open instead. So, he had to clean out the infection, create new edges on each side of her incision, and then apply dual-layered sutures to close it back up. Oh. And he put in a drain, which was just lovely. I spent almost the entire day on Sunday at the Pet ER. I am totally thankful that I even have one nearby.

Now, it’s three days after the second procedure.

The incision now, 10/13

I took Bailey into her regular vet for another wound check today. She’s doing so well that they were able to take the drain out. The vet apologized profusely for everything that I’ve had to go through with this ordeal. It’s been over 2 weeks (13 days to be exact) and Bailey still isn’t healed. I have to take her back again on the 18^th to hopefully have the stitches removed provided nothing else goes wrong.

This was almost more than I could take. I’ve had Bailey at the vet’s 5 times in the last 20 days, two of which were weekend runs to the Pet ER for a total cost (thus far) of $1500.00 give or take a couple dollars. I guess for three surgeries and three different medications, that’s not so bad. I’m hoping and keeping my fingers crossed, that this is my deployment “thing”. I’ve paid my dues to the angry deployment gods and will now be left alone in peace to wait for my husband to come home. Sounds fair, right?