Joyce from Best friends emailed me yesterday morning to let me know that Sarah Kubacki, vet tech with Best Friends had picked Amos up for the trip to Vegas so he was on his way.
So today's the day... Amos' first hip surgery is to be performed today at the Las Vegas Veterinary Referral Center in Las Vegas, NV by Dr. Geels. I was told by Holly at LVVRC that someone should be calling me once Amos is out of surgery to inform me on his status and how the surgery went. So all day I waited on pins and needles for a phone call to let me know how it went. and I waited... and I waited.. So, at 4:30 pm with no word, I couldn't take it anymore and called LVVRC to see if maybe they forgot to call or to see if something went wrong. Holly at LVVRC informed me that Amos was fine, but they had a lot of surgeries today and they hadn't taken Amos in to the operating room yet and that he was on the schedule to be the last surgery of the day. While I was on the phone with Holly, a surgery tech at LVVRC called up to the front to let them know they were prepping to bring Amos into the operating room then. Whew! Finally, he is on his way to the operating room and the long surgery is about to start. Holly told me that since the office closes and shuts down their phones at 5pm that I would have to wait until the surgery was over for someone to call me with an update on Amos' status. So again I waited... and waited... and waited some more... I got home from work at 6:45 pm and still had not heard anything. Now I'm starting to get concerned that either I wasn't going to get a call or that the surgery was taking a lot longer than I thought. But yet, I waited some more, hoping to hear something soon. I didn't think I was going to be able to make it until the morning when the office opened to find out anything and that if that was the case it was going to be a L O N G night. Finally at 8:30pm Dr. Geels called me to let me know that Amos made it through the surgery with flying colors and was sleeping the drugs off peacefully in his cage. Whew. Dr. Geels informed me that they had planned to operate on his left hip, but under anesthesia he determined that the right hip was a little worse off so they operated on the right hip today instead. Dr. Geels opted to use a cement less hip joint in lieu of the cemented hip joint as the cemented joints tend to come loose over the coarse of time and cement less joints actually bond to the bone of the femur so they have less slippage over time. He also informed us that now comes the critical time, as the most common post-operative complication in large breed dogs is a femur fracture or break. So we have to be really careful and keep him confined and limit all activity for at least six weeks. That's going to be a bit challenging with such a big dog, but I want the surgery to be as successful as possible and the recovery to go as smooth as possible so he can get back in for the second surgery to his left hip when he is ready.
Dr. Geels said he would follow-up with me in the morning after he does his rounds with all their patients to let me know if Amos will be discharged on Saturday morning as we hope. So, off we went and took Casey to spend the next two nights at Aunt Nancy's and Uncle Jon's house, just in case, so we can leave tomorrow afternoon to head to Vegas to pick him up from LVVRC on Saturday if he is ready to go. Yeah! If there are any problems with discharging him on Saturday we will have to wait and pick him up on Monday morning. So we are hoping everything goes well tomorrow and we will get the green light to pick him up on Saturday. We'll keep you posted...
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