06 November 2008

Minding the Dog Some More

Well, I am very pleased to announce that we seem to be making some progress with our doggie.  As I lay on my air-bed next to him last night, I prayed for all I was worth that his wound would mend.  Since we are told that God is kind to all he has made, I thought it a not unreasonable request. 

I must admit, it was a prayer of desperation, as we have been in constant supervision of Max since his operation.  It is very important that he does nothing like leaping onto the furniture, or climbing up the door to see the postman off, or spending the whole night licking his wound.  He came home after surgery on 21 October and so, for the last 16 days, one of us has slept beside him on that air-bed I mentioned.  We had hoped this miserable situation would cease after ten days when his stitches came out but, as I explained in the previous posting, that was not to be. 

It is not just our sleeping arrangements that have been thrown into disarray.  During his first week back home, I took half-days off work to keep an eye on him during the mornings while my beloved went to work.  When she came home at lunch time, I went into work for the afternoon.  I can tell you without any doubt that there is a limit to how much daytime TV a man can take.  After the first week, I began working from home for half days, and then going in after lunch.  Life has been far from normal, and all three of us feel like we have been imprisoned in the living room.

This morning, I removed his serous-stained dressing to replace it with a clean one.  Guess what: the wound was looking pretty good and showed no sign of weeping.  I cleaned it up and left the wound undressed for about half an hour, just to be sure.  I did put a dressing on, just in case, but I am happy to report at the end of the day that the same dressing looks clean and dry, whereas previous experience gave the expectation that it would be obviously stained and damp.  It is so clean that I decided to leave it on overnight so as not to mess about with his tender tissues any more than is necessary and with the hope that we can dispense with dressings altogether tomorrow.

On the downside, his reluctance to walk on the leg has continued if not increased.  As I have mentioned previously, this may well be a result of the aggravation caused by handling the wound, something that has had to persist by virtue of the need to change dressings and keep the wound clean with salt-water washes.  An additional factor may well be the absence of pain-relief, since his medication ran out about the same time as his stitches were removed.  We've organised some anti-imflamatory pain killers now, so we hope he will begin to feel more comfortable and start using the leg again. 

As I lie beside him on my air-bed tonight, you can guess what I will be praying for...

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