I am sounding like a broken record lately, I think.
Another complication with Ray: Sunday morning we got up to discover he couldn’t stand. At all. He had absolutely no strength in his hind legs.
We literally carried all 80 lbs of him to the Jeep and got him to the emergency vet pronto, which resulted in…pretty much nothing. Without a more extensive exam (and I refused x-rays because we’d just taken a bunch and they were fine) they couldn’t tell us much of anything except nothing was broken.
Of course, my first thought and fear was that the nerve sheath tumor had somehow – already – moved into his spine. Despite being assured over and over that these tumors are extremely slow growing and highly unlikely to invade other parts of the body, I took my usual Chief Pessimist seat in the Pity Party Room. We put mats on the floor and cried and slept next to Ray most of the evening. I mulled on where to donate all of his leftover Milkbones, what I should do with his toys, etc. once he was gone. For me, it was that bad. My husband, who is English, tends to suffer in silence as many English people do. We were both inconsolable.
At 1 a.m., Ray started doing his little chirp noise and was restless. I opened my eyes to find him standing. On his own. I woke my husband. We helped Ray outside, where he quickly collapsed. Discouraged again, we brought him back in, made sure he was relatively comfortable, and went back to sleep. At 6 a.m., he became restless again and I awoke once more to find him standing on his own. A good sign, but I wasn’t convinced. Same thing, though – shortly after helping him outside, he would collapse in a heap.
At 8 a.m. we got him to our regular vets (who are absolute angels, by the way – don’t ever make fun of a Texas Aggie – A&M turns out the BEST veterinarians.) The doctor who has been seeing Ray through all of this worked us in, despite a packed schedule and he was very optimistic. He checked Ray’s reflexes – all good. We took Ray outside to observe him in the soft grass, and lo and behold, he was hopping around on three legs much better, like he had been Saturday before this sudden downturn. He has continued to improve throughout the day.
SO. Now the plan is to give Ray an extra day to recover from whatever happened, and amputation surgery will be Wednesday. And frankly, nobody’s sure what happened – Ray could have done something as simple as pull a muscle; with all of the extra exertion being put on his three good legs, that’s certainly possible. Then again, he could have an underlying back problem that may resurface later. Our strategy now is, if he comes through the amputation surgery ok but the hind leg lameness presents itself again, we will address it then. As the vet said, no matter what the situation, his tumor leg is still going to hurt him, so best to get it off.
When I was making Ray’s dinner tonight, he heard the familiar clanging of the stainless steel bowl and came hopping through the living room and into the kitchen like a crazy dog, ears flopping, tongue wagging, tail swinging. I can’t tell you how happy that made me.