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 ...