Entropion Surgery- Stella's Recovery

    Since I am a firm believe that your body is constantly looking for ways to heal itself, my goal is to add pictures of Stella and see just how different, if anything, her eyes look in the months following surgery leading up to one year post operation. At a few different times we have needed to compress her eyes but otherwise find our eye surgery a distant nightma...memory.   We are now onto bigger and better things- DOG TRAINING, but that is a different blog, for a different day.     Of course, like any girl, Stella is generally only photographed on her good side.    

Our recovery consisted of the highest highs, the lowest lows and every emotion from fear to exhaustion to exultation and back again. But it's over.  I remember the night before surgery asking my spouse, "but how will we tell her apart from any other Lab without her signature runny eyes?"Her eyes are still runny, goopy, and now red, and less than idea, but it's over. We don't regret the surgery. We don't believe that we unfairly put our dog through this painstaking recovery. I do believe that Ectropic is better than Entropic and whether that means she'll have more eye infections, only time will tell. Our only recovery advice is, "just get through it. You're one minute closer to it being over." The three of us will have quickly forgotten (or repressed) what we endured and continue living our happy-go-lucky lab loving lives. Thank GOD it's over! Tomorrow Stella celebrates her 5th Birthday. Her entire recovery process has been a l...

#BYECONE. Probably the best part of Stella getting her stitches out was the removal of the cone. Why? Freedom! No more banging into the backs of our legs! Cuddling! Done! The staff told us to keep it in case we ever needed it. It was filthy, bend, misshapen, our tormentor that began and ended this process.My husband slam dunked it into our garbage bins. Stella approved. Stella's stitch removal required the surgeon, and two techs holding her down. If you can imagine someone riding a mechanical bull while using tweezers to delicately thread a needle, this is what my spouse and I witnessed on this happy, happy morning. The surgeon explained that Stella's now, ectropic eye, is 100% cosmetic. I could sit here and say, yes, my dog is now more deformed than she was the month prior, but no one could have predicted such adverse results and I'd take cosmetic over ulcerated eyes any day of the week. Stella was so excited to get her cone removed, so very very ...

One of the tougher parts of caring for an injured pup is having one person watching over the dog at all times. At. All. Times. Our dog essentially became our newborn. No showers until the other parent comes home, one person on duty, another off, barely any sleep and so on. I should also add that it was never explicitly stated, "you must be home to watch your dog 100% of the time." We were only gently reminded, urged and hounded that, "yes, dogs scratch their eyes while wearing the cone," "Some dogs will break out of their cone," "Most problems occur from dogs causing trauma to themselves," "Wow... with a dog like Stella, she'll find a way..." We weren't going to take chances with how far we came. No, she wasn't really interested in getting her cone off, it only scared her when she trotted around the house or ate so zealously that her bowl flipped over into her face. But, I strongly urge that if your dog is anything like mine...

Our Surgeon's office is great in  corresponding through email. This is not only important since we live so far away but also because it helps us know that we're on the right track, which we weren't (but thought we were) before. This correspondence goes above and beyond in providing patient care so I commend and praise the doctors and staff for this. It's important that you establish this kind of relationship with your dog's veterinary office (and have the correct email!) As I mentioned, our confidence in the care we were able to provide was at this point shattered, but we were vigilantly compressing every two hours on the dot and knew that no matter what we did, one week from that horrible scab-ripping incident, this would be over. My spouse stayed home with Stella and drafted a thorough email to the surgeon, knowing that we needed assurance before heading into the weekend. He asked about a stray piece of skin ...

Now we were presented with the necessity of soaking her eyes every two hours, keeping the open wounds clean and avoiding scabbing, a dog in pain, and a mixture of guilt for putting her through this, so naturally we questioned everything about doing this surgery. No it wasn't an emergency. I kept reminding myself that we were advised, "if you don't do this, then..,." although it provided me with little comfort. I'd never be able to fully know that what we did in the long run would pay off- if in ten years Stella can still spot a crumb on the floor, I'd know this was worth it, but now, there are so many variables causing a cloud of doubt with this procedure. At this point I felt like as good as we were caring for her, it wasn't enough. Either we couldn't provide the appropriate care due to the nature of her personality (or any dog's for that matter. I don't care how well behaved your dog is, this recovery protocol is nearly impossible) or it w...

We had made up our minds to endure the hour trek to the Surgeon's, cone hitting everything in sight, an angry dog barking for her window to be put down, and me, angry that we would "just be wasting our time." Why? We're overly cautious. I can't tell you the amount of times in the past that we went back and forth for one ailment or another and ran her down to the vet, the ER, only to be assured she was fine. With that being said, you can't put a price on assurance and there was something that just irked us about her left eye. To go or not to go? Go. Always go. Stella's left eye looked much different to us than her right. When she figured out where we were, betrayal swept across that shaved face. She made us pay for it by causing a scene: pulling, yelping, pulling, repeat. We heard how much training she needed (no surprise there) but were devastated, shocked, surprised and angry with the state of her eyes. The ophthalmologist believed that not only...

Stella's left eye seems to be giving her more trouble in these few days following the procedure. She would attempt to rub it against the cone and it was the one she resisted us getting near whenever we tried to get a good look at it. I called the Doggie Hospital over the weekend to have them reaffirm that we're correctly doing what we're supposed to, especially the compress instructions. Pictures that we took of Stella on Friday to show her Surgeon were kicked back to us,  and we just needed reassurance. We were exhausted. (A schedule of no sleep with  pills, drops and compress at 6AM, 12PM,2PM, 6PM and 10PM) We were cooped up.(Stella hadn't attempted to play and neither did we). We weren't sure what we should or shouldn't be picking off of her eyelids.(everything looked like a scab and everything didn't in the three second intervals we could get Stella to still so we could look at her eyes). And ...

I hate eye drops. Who doesn't? Babies have to be held down for eye drops. Toddlers have to be bribed. Adults have to be rationalized with. Dogs have to be held down, bribed, wrestled, tricked, and yes, even pleaded with while maybe, just maybe, a drop will by chance hit the corner of the eye and go in. The Miracle on Doggie Drops. GOALLLLLLLL! It's simple; no matter how you look at it eye drops are a treacherous act in which you tell the human, er, dog, human, dog-human, that this isn't going to hurt one little bit,  lies. When I was on eye pressure drops 3x a day they burned, they stung, they were little droplets of  sacrilegious torture devices, but they were necessary. This is what we try to explain to Stella. She yawns. Our discharge sheet flaunts its pompous instructions, "Administer 4 drop into each eye 4x daily, wait at least five minutes and administer gel," Its bold faced Arial font gl...

The vet's office called us first thing the morning after surgery. We wrote down a million questions, so I just needed to decide where to start. I questioned the instruction on compressing the eyes every several hours, how exactly to apply the eye gel, and the cone battles Stella had already begun. The warm compress application was stressed, the warmth of the cloth would be for cleanliness and swelling, wiping away discharge and preventing infection. The instructions read, ''After compress, wipe away the scabs if necessary." This is almost laughable for any dog, let alone one who needs to be held down in order to administer drops.  She was in pain and didn't want us touching what hurt. We were also unsure of what was what so we very gingerly attempted to clean her incision site. At this point we found the washcloth to be too cumbersome and used gauze pads instead. We weren't sure how wet the stitches could get so I just r...

We got in to the office at 7AM,  did a routine check-in with the Tech and Stella was taken in for prep, left in the hands of the experts. Her Internist and the Orthopedic surgeon were working in  tandem monitoring her Addison's and fixing her eyes while on the table.Too nervous to go out of the area, we got a hotel room, slept, watched TV and did work. In hindsight this was the best idea because as it was, sleep would be a rarity in this recovery process, especially the first few nights home. Stella was out of surgery by 2PM and we got to see her around 3PM. Their criteria for her to go home was that she had to eat. We both laughed. I can't wait for Stella to look just as she did prior to the surgery, smiling and happy . When Stella came waddling into the exam room, I was horrified. If someone says that you look even remotely okay after surgery, they're lying. I couldn't look at Stella initially (Travis said, come here beauti...

About a year after Stella's nip/tuck (her regular vet performed a tacking- pulling the loose skin around her eyes, while she was already under anesthesia for her spay. The stitches were dissolvable, there was no discharge, she didn't even wear a cone) we noticed her eyes dripping frequently again. Some days were a lot worse than others and the car always made them run more than usual. As mentioned in a previous post, our regular vet advised us to get the surgery again when she saw the Entropion still present. Before we had time to consider, we were faced with a much bigger problem; After months of sickness, Stella was about 1.5 years old, and diagnosed with Addison's Disease. I have toyed with the idea of blogging about that, but that is a project for the future. What prompted us to choose surgery now was the persistence of our very trusted regular vet, Stella's internal medicine doctor, and several ER doctors that we tend to see every holiday w...

From the moment I first saw Stella I thought that her eyes looked extra squinty. She was the puppy who ran to us and cuddled while all hell was broke loose on the farm: her grandmother howling, a goat was bahhh'ed (I swear I heard it), her sisters were clumsily exploring, finally free from their crate, and one notoriously pranky Chocolate pup, was biting crotches. As I pried this one away from us, Stella stayed close by, quickly falling asleep in Travis' arms. she was the obvious choice. So after the breeder showed us her credentials, gave us records certifying the puppies' parents were healthy, we were convinced. Stella was the obvious choice, we had picked our pup. Here is Stella on one of her first days home. You can tell her eyes are runny even then. Our non-pet-friendly apartment lease was ending, we had no idea where we'd go, and only two months time before Stella was due home. I had no house to bring her home to, but I felt assured k...

Stella's recovery has been frightening, worrisome, even momentarily joyful. One minute we're celebrating the fact that we hit the bullseye administering Stella's drops, the next we're panicking as blood is oozing from her eyes. There are very few websites chronicling a dog's recovery with this surgery so I thought that this would be helpful for parents of dogs with Entropion, but also those who have dogs recovering from other surgeries and conditions. I'll forewarn you that we are the quintessential helicopter parents, but we are just trying to do right by our dog. After all, she takes her duty of loving and protecting us very seriously, so we try to do the same for her. We have also learned a lot from Stella's medical needs. I am hoping others will find our blog to be honest and meaningful. Stella said that she won't be too embarrassed sharing information or being pictured in her cone of shame if it helps other doggies and...