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Dog With Slipped Disk -- Anyone Have Experience??
My very athletic five-year-old Siberian Husky was in the living room this
afternoon. Suddenly, she's screaming in horrible pain and unable to move her hind legs. She's twirling around, trying to walk, completely paralyzed in her hind end. After a while, she was able to take a few wobbly steps, then sit for a moment, then a few more wobbly steps. I rushed her to the emergency vet and it appears she has one or two ruptured disks (also called slipped disks). She's going to have another procedure tomorrow, where they inject dye into her spinal column and do some kind of scan, which is likely followed by immediate surgery. Because of the sudden onset, the vet said it's pretty certain she has a slipped disk and not a tumor or other malady. Has anyone here ever had experience with a dog who has had spinal surgery of this sort? From what I've read, and also what the vet said, younger dogs almost always have a 100 percent recovery. I'm just wondering about how long the recovery will be and other sorts of things I'll need to know. It appears she'll have to be crated for several weeks to keep from bouncing about. Any shared experience would be appreciated. |
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Dogman Dave wrote:
My very athletic five-year-old Siberian Husky was in the living room this afternoon. Suddenly, she's screaming in horrible pain and unable to move her hind legs. She's twirling around, trying to walk, completely paralyzed in her hind end. After a while, she was able to take a few wobbly steps, then sit for a moment, then a few more wobbly steps. I rushed her to the emergency vet and it appears she has one or two ruptured disks (also called slipped disks). She's going to have another procedure tomorrow, where they inject dye into her spinal column and do some kind of scan, which is likely followed by immediate surgery. Because of the sudden onset, the vet said it's pretty certain she has a slipped disk and not a tumor or other malady. Has anyone here ever had experience with a dog who has had spinal surgery of this sort? From what I've read, and also what the vet said, younger dogs almost always have a 100 percent recovery. I'm just wondering about how long the recovery will be and other sorts of things I'll need to know. It appears she'll have to be crated for several weeks to keep from bouncing about. Any shared experience would be appreciated. I had a BC who managed to rupture two disks in his neck. He was in the habit of ripping boards off of our shadow box-style fence (in order to escape and roam the neighborhood), and the fact that the border collie spine is not designed for such antics finally caught up to him. The docs at the ortho clinic did the dye test on the spine and called me with the news that it was most probably cancer - they said they were about 85 percent sure. Said there was evidence of a mass well above and below the disks that were supposed to be ruptured. And that the kindest thing might be to not allow him to wake up from the anesthesia. I was flabbergasted. Devastated. How could cancer have such a sudden onset? And my own vet had been so certain that it was trauma... So I said "absolutely not" to immediate euthanasia. Told them to proceed with the surgery. Open him up and see what's in there. If it was the disks, patch him up, and if it was cancer, just debulk the tumor, get as much of it out as possible to relieve his pain and buy him some time. It was the disks. They'd ruptured with such violent force that the squishy stuff inside had spurted all up and down the spinal canal - that's what they'd been seeing on the dye test. It still makes me shake to think about what would have happened if I'd been willing to follow "expert advice" instead of my own instincts. Connor had staples in his neck holding the incision closed. 12 days post op I took him to have them removed and the incision just FELL OPEN. Thank god it happened before we left the office. Healing was delayed by the oral steroids he'd been given to try to relieve his pain prior to his consult at the ortho clinic. They re-stapled him and we returned again in another 14 days. This time it stayed closed. As I recall, I kept him crated for that first month, taking him outside in the yard on a belt that wrapped around his waist so as not to put any strain on his neck. He was so relieved not to be hurting anymore that I had to keep him confined to keep him from doinging around like a maniac. Kathleen |
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