October 29, 2008

Is TPLO the only option?

Don reminded me that we'd already paid for a long vacation (we'd booked a cruise from LA to Hawaii and had taken some time at each end of the trip) and that we had gotten travel insurance. He said he'd rather take care of Winston than go on vacation. Duh! Vacations are important to me, but I have to agree with him on this one. I cancelled the trip and filled out all the paperwork to get our money back. It was an easy process so I'd have to say that I'd use TravelGuard again.

I've been out on the internet reading all I can about TPLOs and other people's experiences with it. I found sites that recommended it, sites that said to stay away from it, more info that describes it, and some other blog sites where people wrote in great detail about their experiences. I'm pretty conservative so I really hoped that we could go the "conservative management" route where the knees will just heal on their own if you keep the dog quiet enough.

I was told that the sooner we did the surgery, the better since it would stop the progression of arthritis before too much damage was done, but that it didn't have to happen immediately so I had a little time. I tried to keep Winston quiet in October -- haha! He's such an active boy that didn't go over well at all. There's no way I could have ever keep him quiet enough for any real healing to happen, and even if it started to, he'd probably just re-injure it. I kept watching the insides of his legs for medial buttress formation. I thought I could see it starting, so I figured I'd better really get serious about surgery. Isn't there anything less invasive than the TPLO?

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