Toffee and the Vets

Hi all,

I expect by now you all know that’s its great news with our Toffee. God was definitely good to us and not only listened but answered all our prayers.

We took these last few photos before taking her to the vets in case she lost her eye!

Just before we left for the vets, we made a promise to Toff that we would let her have a drink if all was OK.

Our normal vet was not there and a new man saw Toff, he was lovely, he was accompanied by a female vet, also lovely; it looked like she had undergone a complete face reconstruction for some reason. You could tell the scarring and effect was very good, but she would never look normal.

Anyway they phoned the vet that had done the first surgery and got all the info, they explained to us that they had to put Toffee to sleep and remove the stitches and clean the eye and look for nerve separation, ulcers, inflammation and infection etc. all of which he explained is very possible. He had also noticed that Toffee had two marbles like lumps on the top of her head; they are her horns I always say! (Do you remember Mummy used to say that too?) He asked if I had ever had a biopsy taken from them, I said no, he said he would take a biopsy whilst she was under.

We held her in our arms as she went off, he was so nice and spoke and stroked her the whole time.

We waited in the surgery with Jeanette and Brian, she was gone for almost one hour, once they called us back, the nice man explained what they had done and what the outcome was. He had completely cleaned the eye and injected it with anti-inflammatory medication. He found the eye was not infected, not inflamed, the nerve was attached and everything looked wonderful, he said this was not what they had expected to find, she was a very lucky dog indeed. I think she was a very blessed dog indeed. As for the ‘lumps’ they were also completely normal cysts filled with a fluid.

He could do one of two things to make sure that the eye did not pop out again, (I asked was this likely, he said yes) one was to sew the entire outer lid to the bottom (as the other stitches would not have held long term) and she would have to have a drain put in, this would mean that she would have had a fifteen day stay in hospital and as he said, this is not good to separate you and also very expensive. The second option was to sedate her for the entire day, tomorrow she would also be quite and sleepy, and this was to give the eye total rest. We would have to administer two drops of anti inflammatory in her eye three times a day for six days. She was to be kept completely quite for about four days, no walks, no getting on furniture as she must not jump down. No playing with Giz and definitely no fighting with Rottweiler's. If we noticed the eye weeping we are to squirt saline into it before each set of eye drops. Needless to say we all agreed that the second option was better for all.

He also told us that if the eye popped out again, we were to soak a gauze in clean cold water and try to ease it back, if not possible we were to get her to the vets as soon as possible, if vet is not open we must bind the head and eye with a bandage until we can get to a vet:O(

He gave her another injection and she is still sleeping soundly, she is OK because when I spoke to her she definitely moved her head towards me. I didn’t like the idea that she had not come too from the first aesthetic, but she is conscious in as much as she is aware of me she just cannot move.

He gave us a bill chitty, (they do not write the cost, just a code and she gets it up on the screen) so we were guessing as to the cost of this operation and cyst draining. We both thought (or hoped) it would be no more than the first operation. The charge of the whole thing was 28 Euro. Our vets are unbelievable.

What a wonderful outcome to the whole unhappy saga ah. We prayed there would be no permanent damage, that the bill would be within our possible means, and that Toff would not suffer. All three was answered above all our expectations. Prayer is definitely a strong Allie to have on your side.

Toff sleeps it off! Perhaps we gave her a little too much wine!

I know that in the great scheme of things, this is a very small problem, and I am aware Toff is only a dog, but to us, she is our baby and God must understand that.

Tina Spain.