Saturday, October 6, 2007

Fuzzy Friday: Opal's Recovery

Every Friday I write about our pets

On Thursday, we took Opal to a local vet here in Houston to have her stitches removed. While she wasn't very happy about that procedure, her scar looks really good and the fur on her tummy is growing back nicely.

The vet also took some blood for a CBC (Complete Blood Count). You may recall that what initially prompted concerns about her spleen was a lingering anemia that showed up months ago when we took her in for a bad cough. The surgeon asked us to check her blood two weeks after the splenectomy to make sure the anemia had improved, and it has. Her red blood and white blood counts are right in the middle of the normal range.

Her platelet count is way up, and we're not quite sure what that means, so we've emailed all the info to Dr. Gillum in Little Rock. We think the platelet increase is a natural part of Opal's recovery from losing her spleen.

Opal is full of energy, eating normally and ready for fun. She is still squirrelly about having her tummy touched, but that's always been true. Having it x-rayed, shaved, ultrasounded, biopsied, shaved again, sliced open, stitched, poked, prodded, wiped with alcohol, and the stitches pulled out has made her veeeeeeery protective of her belly. She's always been an NLD (Nervous Little Dog), a Drama Queen, and a bit Obsessive-Compulsive. Those things are often par for the course with an American Eskimo. But we're cutting her a lot of slack. She's been a trooper and we're thrilled that she's doing so well. We hope she'll travel with us for many more years.

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