Mazey and her TPLO

[Smokeycat]

I think a lot of people question why they did the surgery in the first few weeks, I know I certainly did. But now I wouldn't change a thing as his results were almost as perfect as they could be.

 

[sjdavenport]

Dawn, I hope I'll be saying the same thing a few months down the road! And thanks again for pointing me towards Orthodogs (and then I joined the TPLO group too), they've been a great resource, and very comforting as well. Mazey had her first outing today since the surgery (of course on leash the entire time). I needed a break from studying, so we went to visit Kerry's mom out at the lake for a few hours. Mazey really enjoyed doing something normal again, even if she couldn't run with the boys. She'll be on extra strict cage rest for a day or two to make sure the extra activity wasn't too much for that leg, but if I could ask her, I think she'd tell me it was worth it.

[video=youtube;Pv-N6gZeJIY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv-N6gZeJIY[/video]

Finally got to roll around in the grass again:


Confinement is made a little more bearable with chews bigger than her head:

 

[Smokeycat]

Lucky girl. Kryten didn't get to leave the yard for 2 months except for vet visits (should have been only 1 but the big lug unexpectedly jumped and caused his osteotomy cut to separate). I'm glad that Orthodogs helps. I found they were great with some things and not so good with others. I had one person tell me "if he won't walk just pick him up".

 

[sjdavenport]

We are 5 weeks out from Mazey's TPLO surgery. She's feeling pretty good and starting to want to do more than I'll let her. She has a recheck with her ortho surgeon next Wednesday, and she'll get repeat radiographs to make sure everything looks good. I'd really like to get her back to our vet that we used for acupuncture, but I unfortunately haven't had the time.

Most recent video:
[video=youtube;o9Ff_QEE9xw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ff_QEE9xw&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[vadersmom]

Wow! She is doing really well! Koloff had TPLO surgery a while back and it took him 3-4 months to get to the point he was off leash. He had a bone graft that didn't heal so after about 5-6 months of little activty, I just started walking down the drive with a gradual progression. Thank God he was a very chill dog, solo, and certainly didn't mind being confined to the kitchen for months!

 

[sjdavenport]

Wow, that is a reeeaaally long time. That was my biggest fear going into the surgery, that she would have to be activity restricted for months and months. But thankfully my vet cleared her for free roam in the house, and she's allowed to have short leash walks with increasing duration. She of course isn't allowed to wrestle with the other dogs yet, but soon hopefully!

 

[sjdavenport]

We are 6-7 weeks out from Mazey's surgery now. We had a recheck with her orthopedic surgeon for radiographs and because I was concerned that she was swinging her leg out slightly when she walks. The radiographs show that she's healing well and has minimal arthritis in that joint (which I'm over the moon about because that's the only reason I elected to go through with the surgery), but that she has slight patellar tendonitis. He says that she's swinging that leg out voluntarily from the hip because of the discomfort from the tendonitis (which will resolve on its own) and not from any problem with the healing bone/plate (yay!). He actually cleared her for return to full activity, but I'm still restricting her to leash walks and no wrestling with her brothers because it seems too soon to me.

Here she is today:
[video=youtube;6tSg7F4Me04]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tSg7F4Me04&feature=youtu.be[/video]

And her rads (sorry they're super fuzzy, I snapped the picture on my phone):

 

[sjdavenport]

Well, if it's not one thing, it's another. Mazey's TPLO leg is doing awesome. She's been going on 30 minute walks with no increased soreness afterwards. Her elbow arthritis is flared up, but she just needs another acupuncture session for that (we haven't been in a while). But she started vomiting blood Thursday night. I came home and found a ton of bloody vomit, some with sloughed tissue in it. Right now, she's on heavy duty GI protectants and a diet easy on her system. Monday she's going to the university's internal med department for endoscopy and biopsies to try to find the cause. I would really appreciate good thoughts for her. I am just sick with worry for my sweet girl.

 

[Hector]

Oh no, poor Mazey. Wishing her well.

 

[QY10]

My clan and I are sending lots of positive, healing thoughts to Mazey.

 

[NYDDB]

Oh, poor girl. Hoping for some good news on Monday...

 

[Smokeycat]

Poor girl.

 

[Boxergirl]

Poor, sweet Mazey. Sending tons of good thoughts your way.

 

[sjdavenport]

Well we never even got to the endoscopy. They diagnosed a mast cell tumor on her shoulder under a large scar. I noticed the lump several weeks ago, but assumed that it was scar tissue from a poorly sutured previous wound. Because GI bleeding can be associated with MCTs, we decided to go ahead and stage it by getting thoracic radiographs, an abdominal ultrasound, and liver and spleen aspirates. The thoracic rads were clear, the only abnormality they found on U/S is a splenic nodule which they think had the appearance of a benign nodular hyperplasia. So now I'm anxiously waiting on the liver and spleen cytology. There are three possible outcomes:
1. Come back normal: we'll have the surgical oncologist remove the mass with wide margins.
2. Come back inconclusive: still have it removed, continue to monitor with abdominal ultrasound, etc
3. Come back with disseminated mast cells: consult with oncology department for chemo
This is not the news I thought I would get today.

 

[Boxergirl]

Damn mast cell cancer. Lost way too many good boxer friends to that. I hope the results come back normal so you can go the remove with wide margins route. I know how worried you are, and I'm so damn sorry. I'm not sure how you feel about this, but have you read the benadryl/tagamet protocol for mast cell tumors? I posted the link a while back somewhere. It maybe couldn't hurt, depending on the results. Many boxer people tend to just go with it.

 

[sjdavenport]

I appreciate the good thoughts. The first thing they did after seeing mast cells on the FNA was give her a whopping IM dose of benadryl. We are continuing the benadryl three times a day, and she's already on famotidine, which has the same mechanism as tagamet. I'm with you on that one; it can only help, and it's what the internist recommended as well.

 

[sjdavenport]

So there was "mast cell trafficking" in her liver and spleen aspirates. The significance of this is unknown, as it's not obvious metastasis and could possibly be normal in a dog. We tried to do nuclear scintigraphy last week to find the lymph node that drains where the mast cell tumor is, but of course, the gamma camera wasn't working. They got it working today, performed the lymphoscintigraphy, and aspirated the lymph nodes that were draining the MCT. The awesome news is that there were no mast cells seen on cytology, so no metastasis to the lymph node! Yay! So the oncology surgeon removed the tumor and didn't have to remove any lymph nodes. She woke up just fine, and we're bringing her home tomorrow morning. I will be so happy to be through will all of this. Here is my poor girl when I just went to visit with her:

 

[Boxergirl]

That's excellent news so far! The margins were clean?

 

[sjdavenport]

We won't know for sure if they got good margins and what the grade of the MCT is until I get the results from histopath. Thankfully the pathologist is on site, so I will hopefully find out tomorrow. Fingers crossed!!!

 

[sjdavenport]

The histopath report had good news for us. The surgeon got clean margins, so we don't need any follow up radiation or anything. The tumor was low grade on one scale and grade II/III on a separate grading system, so the risk of metastasis is relatively low and the mean survival time is greater than 2 years. We just have to repeat her liver and spleen aspirates periodically to monitor for more mast cell trafficking. Her incision is healing quite well and her TPLO leg is doing awesome. No I just hope we can go a little while with no more medical crises.



[video=youtube;GhfiJaCNtu8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhfiJaCNtu8[/video]