Maddy's Second Surgery

As I wrote in my last post, our little Maddy had to have surgery the day after Thanksgiving.  When we arrived, there was a welcome sign for Maddy in the room, which is something we find completely adorable!

Drop off...time for surgery!

So cute!

On the wall in the office...these are my kind of people!

We dropped her off at 7:30 am and the vet went over everything with us before we left.  One thing that surprised us was that she told us she'd be going in through the front of Maddy's neck to get to her spine and deal with the ruptured disks!

To say we were worried about this surgery is an understatement.  Maddy JUST had surgery three months ago to remove her spleen.  And you may recall that her post-surgery recovery was not great.  Although my dad is a surgeon and people have surgery all the time, it is still scary.  And things can go wrong.  And the idea of Maddy's neck being opened up was beyond frightening.  I don't know why that seemed so much more terrifying than if they'd gone in through the back of her neck; I think because we'd been through back surgery in 2014 with Ginny, I feel like I would have known what to expect if the incision was on her back.

Watching the tech carry Maddy away was a very sad moment.  While we had complete confidence in the expertise of the vet, I could not help but think, "Please don't let this be the last time we see that happy tail."

When we got back in the car without her, Ginny could not understand what was happening.  For the entire ride home (almost an hour), she just slept in a bed in the backseat and refused to look up at me when I called her name...and this is a dog who barks when a leaf flutters by.  She was subdued and sad the remainder of the day; you really can't tell me dogs don't experience the same emotions we do because I've seen it repeatedly in these kinds of situations and it is so heartbreaking!

In the car after the drop off - depressed and actively ignoring me.

Friday - depressed and sleeping in my hair up on the back of the couch behind me.

Friday - she was so sad.

The vet called at 4:00 that afternoon to give us an update and the news was very, very good!  The actual surgery – removing the problematic disk material – went better than we could have hoped for, and Maddy herself had done exceptionally well and was awake and moving around and eating and drinking on her own.  This was fabulous to hear, as it had been a very long eight hours of waiting!  In fact, she'd pulled the catheter out of her paw a couple of times and they decided that they would stop putting it back in, meaning she wouldn't be getting any fluids or medications intravenously.  Maddy is generally very sweet and happy, but she is also pretty stubborn (classic Dachshund), so her obstinate behavior made us laugh and believe that she was feeling ok if she was being such a troublemaker.

The vet said Maddy was doing so well that she considered sending her home that day.  THAT DAY!  But just to be safe, she decided to keep her overnight for monitoring.  Frankly, as much as we wanted to drive straight there and bring her home, we preferred that they keep an eye on her for one night.  You may recall that when she had her spleen removed in August, the update right after the surgery was very positive.  And then the next morning, things were awful and she ended up spending two additional nights in the hospital.  So we were thrilled to hear she was doing well, but also restrained in our relief until she made it through the night.

Yesterday morning, the vet called at 8 am and said things looked great and that Maddy was a rock star and she asked if we could be there at 10 am to pick her up.  When we told Ginny we were going to get Maddy, she could not have run to the door more quickly!

Right before we went in to get Maddy - such anticipation!

When we arrived, we had to go over her discharge paperwork and medications/restrictions, and then the awesome tech went in the back and brought Maddy out to us.  What a happy reunion!  As we were checking out, the vet came out to chat for a moment and we could not thank her enough for her skill and care.

Our exceptional neurologist & surgeon - note Maddy's happy tail!

When we put Maddy in the car, she crawled over to Ginny to be beside her and she put her paw on top of Ginny's paw and they stayed that way for the entire ride home – holding hands.  I thought my heart might explode.

I have no words. <3

Once we got home, we let Maddy walk around a little bit and hang out in her bed in the kitchen for a short time, but she is on strict restrictions in terms of activity for the next four weeks, so she has to spend a lot of time in the playpen we have from when Ginny had back surgery.  She does not like it one bit.  We had her sit with us on the couch when we could, but she must spend as much time as possible in the playpen, at least for a couple of weeks so that she doesn't walk around or re-injure herself, and as you can see in the photos, she was highly annoyed being in there.  I slept on the couch beside her last night, and she spent about 20 minutes digging and scratching and trying to get out of there before finally surrendering and going to sleep (did I mention that she's stubborn?).  I suspect it's going to be a long recovery as we try to keep her as still as possible because it's clear that she is feeling much better!

Recovering is hard work!

"What is happening?!?"

"Why am I in here?"

"I know you can see me - get me out of here!"

"How dare you?"

Here's a photo of her incision; we think it looks amazing and her sutures will come out in two weeks.  I know she's our dog and that makes me biased, but honestly, what a badass this little dog is!  So proud of her and very hopeful that as the incision heals, the pain and discomfort she's been experiencing will all but disappear!

She is one tough little dog!

Happy Tails to you!

More Surgery for Maddy...

2017 has not been great for Maddy.

  

About two and a half weeks ago, we noticed that Maddy was limping; she did not appear to want to put any weight on her front left paw.  We kept an eye on it for a few days and when it did not seem to be getting any better, we took her to Dr. T. on Saturday, November 4 in hopes of getting some answers. After an X-ray and physical exam revealed nothing, we went home with meds and directions for strict bedrest.

We left for our trip to Paris a few days later and while we were gone, my mom ended up taking Maddy back to see Dr. T. again because she was not doing well and essentially refusing to move at all.  When I facedtimed from DLP, Maddy looked terrible.  As in, my first thought was that we needed to get on a plane and got home because I was so worried.  Of course, there's no one on earth who provides better care for her than my mom, and she repeatedly assured us to enjoy our trip, so we just checked in with her throughout each day we were away.

Since she was not improving, we asked my mom to make an appointment with a neurologist at the same practice where Ginny had her spinal surgery back in 2014.  The first appointment they had was early on Tuesday morning, about 6 hours after we got home from our trip.  I felt terrible about not going to the appointment, but I'd just taken my three personal days for the trip, and I had to go to work.  Fortunately, my mom was able to go with C – it is always easier to manage appointments with two people!

At the appointment, the doctor examined Maddy and then decided to do an MRI to figure out what was going on.  It was not good news.  She has three ruptured disks in her neck that are "concussed" and causing compression on her spinal cord. The nerve for that front left paw is directly affected by this injury.

The result? Maddy needs spinal surgery.  The doctor who met with C and my mom explained that it would be a very complicated surgery and that she would want to be the one to do the surgery because she has extensive training and experience, so Maddy's surgery is scheduled for this coming Friday, November 24.

Unlike Ginny, whose ruptured disks were the result of an acute injury, Maddy's appear to be the result of chronic wear-and-tear.

Also unlike Ginny, Maddy is not young.  Ginny was five-and-a-half when she had spinal surgery; Maddy is almost twelve-and-a-half.  I know she looks like such a happy, young dog, but she is a senior citizen now!

We are obviously worried about this upcoming surgery, given her age, that it's her back/neck, and that she just had surgery only three months ago.  This little dog is a gleaming ray of sunshine in our life and we just want her to be well!

I'm not sure if I've ever written about her name, but her full name (i.e., on all official paperwork) is Madison.  That's the name she came with from the rescue organization, and we liked it, so we kept it and decided that we would call her Maddy.  We do still call her Maddy, but very early on, "Maddy" became "Maddy Magoo," which was shortened to "Magoo."  Not sure how that nickname really came about, but I'm not really sure how any of our dogs' nicknames come about!  Nonetheless, C and I pretty much only call her Magoo at home.

As I've been communicating with our family this past week about her, each of our parents has referred to her as "my Magoo."  This not only is the sweetest thing ever, but it speaks to how special of a dog she is, that everyone thinks of her as "their" Magoo.

Fingers crossed that all goes well on Friday and that she has a smooth and speedy recovery!

Happy Tails to you!

Disneyland Paris: Day 6

Since it was our last day, got up early, went to breakfast, and then took advantage of Extra Magic Hours for resort guests.  We went into Walt Disney Studios and rode Ratatouille twice with no wait!  The last thing we did in that park was finally ride Tower of Terror, which was great!

Another great view for breakfast this morning!

We went back to the hotel to check out and store our bags for a little while at Bell Services so we could spend our last little chunk of time at Disneyland.  We took a lot of photos and rode Hyperspace Mountain and generally wandered around the park and tried to soak up as much of the atmosphere as possible to tide us over until our next trip!

I want this button on my remote control at home!

I love Pluto!  He was so cute peeking around the corner at me!

I love, LOVE, LOVE this castle!

  

At noon, we picked up our luggage and walked over to the train station.  We took a train back to the airport, which took about ten minutes.  At the airport, we grabbed some lunch, and when we went to check in for our flight, a very nice gentleman saw that we had no bags to check and waved us through to the front of the line, which saved us a very lengthy wait!  We went through security without any difficulty; actually the security agent made quite a fuss over my laptop because it looks like a composition book and asked me several questions about it in French, which I am proud to say I completely understood!  Despite taking French class for almost my entire elementary, middle, and high school years, I have lived in the U.S. for 22 years now and I never ever speak it, so I am extremely rusty.  After a few days being surrounded by the language, it all began to come back to me…ahhhh, imagine how fluent I could be if I lived in France for any length of time!

One last look back at the Disneyland Hotel as we walked to the train station!

This is a charging station for your electronics - but you have to pedal to get power!

We were at the gate about 90 minutes before our flight and I went to the convenience store to buy two bottles of water.  The cashier told me that she needed to see my boarding pass, which C had back at our seats.  I told her I didn't have it on me and she said that I couldn't buy the water.  What?!?  Apparently they track everything everyone purchases!  Bizarre!  On another note, there was a piano in the waiting area for anyone to play, and a guy decided to go over to it and entertain all of us – he was SO good and got a loud and enthusiastic round of applause from the several hundred people in the gate area!  I love unexpected things like that!

The plane took forever to load – Norwegian is not particularly efficient with this and then we sat on the plane for more than an hour while multiple people were apparently having trouble getting through security.  Then the flight actually took forty minutes longer than scheduled, so in all, we were on the plane for about nine hours.  It felt much longer because it was a full flight, so we had someone sitting between us, but fortunately, I slept for almost the entire flight.  As with other Norwegian flights we've been on, there are colored lights in the cabin during the descent, so I enjoyed that as usual!

We landed just before 9:00, but it took quite a while to get to the gate between taxiing forever and then getting towed into the gate because it was a "tight space."  When we finally got off the plane, we took the AirTrain to the parking lot, and were on the road before 9:45.  We got home at about 2:15 am and so happy to see two wagging tails upon our arrival!

As always, there are no words to express how grateful we are that my mom watched Maddy and Ginny for us.  She is the best Fairy Dogmother ever!  While we appreciate each and every time she watches them for us while we travel, this time was a lot of work for her because Maddy is sick (that is a forthcoming blog post…) and we know there is nowhere else we would want Maddy to be than in my mom's care.  We are so very lucky!!!

A few final thoughts about Disneyland Paris…

-       Even though there are only two theme parks - and Walt Disney Studios is relatively small - we still walked 36.4 miles over the six days!

-       There are definitely cultural differences between America and France – at least that’s what I'm choosing to believe instead of that people were just being rude by cutting in line, taking up the entire walkway, etc.

-       Smoking is everywhere – EVERYWHERE – and I'm really not trying to offend anyone, but I have little tolerance for inconsiderate smokers. My mom has a terrible degenerative lung disease and has never been a smoker in her entire life and it just angers me when I have to breathe in toxic air against my will. So to stand in line for rides and wait in crowds for shows and walk through the parks and have to inhale smoke because no cast member enforces the no smoking "rules" is nothing short of disgusting and infuriating as far as I'm concerned!

-       In general, the cast members we encountered were, at best, indifferent – this is the same experience we had on our last visit to DLP in January 2016 – and many of them were downright rude. I'd like to think this is once again a cultural difference, but even if it is, it's pretty disheartening

-       There's a lot behavior that is overlooked that would not be tolerated elsewhere – guests climbing up on things, sitting on top of ledges and trash cans, and the like.

-       We had a very unpleasant experience during a period of heavy, cold rain! We bought some popcorn and went in to a very large eating establishment to find a seat and escape the weather, and a cast member told us we could not sit down because we had not purchased food there! Those of you familiar with Cosmic Ray's or Pecos Bill, can you imagine a cast member rudely telling a guest such a thing?!?

-       Various restaurants, attractions, and areas of the parks closed at odd times – I'm not sure if this would be true during high season, but this seemed weird to us!

-       There was a decided lack of merchandise that is particular to DLP – which is good for my wallet, I guess – but I feel like the merchandise is becoming more and more generic across all of the parks because I also noticed this when we went to Tokyo Disneyland earlier this year.

-       The Disneyland Hotel is amazing – although we only briefly visited a few of the other Disney resorts there, they don't hold a candle to the Disneyland Hotel!

-       Le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant is so incredibly pretty – whenever we finally make it to Hong Kong and Shanghai, I will be interested to see if either of those two castles can top this one!

Despite a few things being less than perfect, we had a really great trip!  We will definitely be returning in the future!

Check out my posts about the other days of this trip:

Disneyland Paris: Day 1

Disneyland Paris: Day 2

Disneyland Paris: Day 3

Disneyland Paris: Day 4

Disneyland Paris: Day 5

Happy Tails to you!