Mable went in for surgery this morning around 10am and was done by a little after noon or so. She is recovering well, and the surgical staff remarked how sweet and lovey she is. Yep, that's our Mable.
After a thorough examination and a long discussion with the surgical team this morning, we decided to go ahead with the FHO -- femoral head removal -- essentially removing the head of the hip. The benefits of this far outweighed the other options. For one, she will no longer be in pain there, at all -- the broken part was removed. For two, she gets a quick 2-3 week recovery time before they encourage her to get out, start running and jumping and playing as per the usual, so that it doesn't heal tightly or stiffly. Until then she needs to remain in the cage to heal up a bit. I don't know whether she'll have to wear a cone or not, but I do know she has an incision that needs to heal on her lower inner thigh (where they went in) and will need to be on antibiotics for a bit.
The downsides? Well...she may have a slightly different gait to her walk for the rest of her life. I think that's...fine, really. I mean, if that's the only real side effect? Cool, she'll be fine, she's a goofball anyway so having a weird walk won't change that. And the surgeons said it may be noticeable and it may not.
The surgeons also called Daisy this afternoon to tell her that Mable's other hip isn't fully grown-in yet either, and that's somewhat unusual for a cat of her age -- but Maine Coons (and Mable is 24% Maine Coon and looks it) take a lot longer to grow and continue to grow until ages 2-5 even, so that is actually sort of normal for her. I know for a fact that Mable isn't done growing, nor is Empress -- and Empress is already gigantic. I think they're both going to be monsters. And Gary has more Maine Coon in him than either of the girls. We'll get to that soon enough.
Anyway, onward....
The price of the surgery was another downside too, of course. Baseline price for these specialists (remember, they're "the best") to do the surgery was $2800 or so, give or take. Incidentals could raise that to $3400 or so total -- as in, like if they had complications or needed to give her extra meds or something along those lines. They told us to expect the higher end more than the lower end when everything is all said and done, but they also said that before we even had her under the knife this morning. Because of this, Daisy got a special pet-care-only credit card that has a $4k limit on that and no interest for six months, and that's how we paid for it. We'll pay it off before the interest kicks in anyhow, so at the very least it won't ding us too badly. We don't know the final total and won't until Daisy picks Mable up in the morning tomorrow. Yes, she's staying overnight at the surgery center for some recovery and observation.
So yeah, that's pretty much it at the moment. I'm sure she'll have some downtime and recovery time and will be a little wobbly from the drugs (they're going to give her another opiate shot), but all indications are that she'll be perfectly fine.
That's my girl.
So she will come home tomorrow and we'll watch over her, will keep her in her cage, and I'm sure the boys will be her guardians as they have been for the past few days. Gary and Charlie have kept watch over her like prison guards most of the time, but not like...in a vindictive or cruel way or anything. It's more like they don't know what's going on or why she's in there and they want to make sure she's okay and protected.
The others seem unaffected. I don't think Emmy or Hank notice she's gone, and Pete is old and tired anyway. He appreciates cuddle time with Mable but honestly, these days he's just as likely to be cuddled by any of the others (except for Hank).
No comments:
Post a Comment