I picked Winston up at 11am. The surgical nurse met with me to go over his discharge instructions. She gave me a whole bag full of medications along with a nice little report folder with customized instructions and information for Winston's care. It even has a nice picture of him on the cover! Nice touch :)
I went to set up the ramp into the back of the car while they went to get Winston. It was cold and icky outside but not snowing yet. When they brought him out he was actually walking on the leg but they were still supporting his back end with a sling. It took all three of us women to get him up into the car. When I got home, I had to get him out by myself. Good thing I've been lifting weights for the past few years! I sure needed both arms to support his back end going down that ramp. Luckily we'd worked on teaching him how to use the ramp a few months ago (we've had the ramp for years but never used it until now), so he knew to just go straight down it rather than trying to jump out of the car or go over the side of the ramp.
I didn't know (or had forgotten) that he'd be getting an epidural for the surgery. They said he was a "little dribbly" when they walked him out to the car. I didn't put 2 and 2 together and after unloading him, found that there was a huge puddle in the carpet of my car. When we'd gotten him into the back, he wasn't fully on the bed I'd put back there. I didn't realize that he'd be so leaky. I soaked it up with an old towel and poured white vinegar onto the soaked carpeting. My car smelled like pickles for several days, but it neutralized the urine odor.
We'd set up an electric heater in the "lobby" of our house since it's got 3 doors it's a bit chilly there in the wintertime. Then we set up the exercise pen in half the room and put his orthopedic bolster bed in the pen and put some old sheets over that. I'm glad we did that because the sheets absorbed most of the pee that kept leaking out of him. The discharge instructions said to only take him outside to go potty 3-4 times a day. He was so full of fluid that he'd get up almost hourly to go out and pee. He was walking on his leg, and I made him go slowly. Luckily he had to go so bad that he didn't go far from the door before he stopped and peed. After about midnight that slowed down so he only got up every 4 hours. I worried that he was getting more exercise than he should.
I slept on a thermarest camp pad with a sleeping bag on the floor next to his pen. Anytime he got up, I took him outside to pee. I also set a fairly quiet travel alarm clock to wake myself up to give him pills. I don't think the vets thought about regular schedules when they started their pill cycles because I was supposed to give him a dose of antibiotics at 3am. Over the course of several days I was able to get that adjusted to more like 6am, 2pm, 10pm, but at first I just sucked it up and set an alarm.
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