Back To Our Routine

Cole from about a week ago

Cole has been doing really great. We had the one hiccup in recovery with the Tramadol not working but the Fentanyl patch from the ER vet did the trick. The first few days, he was like a bag of wet sand and feeling really fantastic. It hit him a little harder than the doctor expected. This is a pretty gross detail but a big part of why I write here is to help others going through this not be surprised by things that might happen along the way so here you go. He didn’t start leaking pee again but he did start … oozing poo lol. We think he couldn’t feel his body enough to know he needed to poo. We would take him out at his usual time and he would sort of stand there and sway in the yard after peeing then want to go back to bed. We kept puppy pads under him and would periodically pick up the turd that was on the pad behind him. Luckily this only lasted a few days as the Fentanyl patch wore down.

The Fentanyl patch came off Thursday and he is finished with Amantadine. We started Tramadol again after calling the doctor when he was uncomfortable yesterday. It seems to help enough to take the edge off of whatever he is feeling and he is comfortable. He is still taking Rimadyl, Gabapentin, Tramadol, Cefpodoxime and Trazodone. The last few days have been really nice. We have gone back to our normal routine and Cole is able to do most things for himself now. He can get to his water to drink though we still sometimes offer him water in bed if he seems especially wiped out in the evening. His appetite is really good though the permanent addition of canned food to his kibble is probably part of the reason for that. He and Ella LOVE it. Mike went back to work Wednesday but we watched them with the nanny cams through our phones. Cole was a little whiny the first day but they seem to have settled back into the work week routine.

Another normal thing that has come back is his stubbornness and boundary testing. He has always been a little ornery and periodically checks to see if he can get away with things like not listening and doing what he wants. I am more strict than Mike and I had to convince him at one point that Cole is being naughty, not helpless or tired from recovery. He didn’t want to get up and seemed to enjoy making us heave his 150 butt out of bed. He has this certain side eye look he does when he is testing his boundaries and he was totally doing that look. He would be sitting up in bed and giving me the side eye and when I would say ‘come on, let’s go out and go potty’ he would flop on his side and go limp. He wanted us to move him around the house. We were able to encourage him to get up on his own and he knocked that off after a few days and as soon as Mike agreed that he was being stubborn. I love that he is feeling well enough to be a brat lol!

Another small challenge was he stopped wanting to take his pills when he used to love the smelly pill pockets he gets with them. Our attitude was the problem. Somewhere along the way, he noticed we thought of them as medicine and our “not a fun thing” outlook transferred to him. I started treating them like fun cookies and would bring treats for Ella too. I would give one to Ella first then one to Cole and back and forth until they were all gone. It worked like a charm.

He has had some visitors. Our neighbor said hi to him in the yard and he ran!!! to see her. My heart stopped when I saw him run but it was only about 10 feet total and he seemed ok. My neighbor seemed shocked because she hasn’t seen him since before the surgery then he runs right up to her. Our best friends live around the corner from us and we get together with them every Saturday night and take turns cooking dinner. They came over last night and Cole was happy to see everyone. This friend is an amazing photographer and she did our family photos the weekend we found out about Cole’s cancer. We ordered prints yesterday and the pictures are so wonderful. It is a little weird to see Cole’s right arm in the photos. It is weird to look at it partly because I am getting so used to tripawd Cole and also the fact that his arm was there and now it isn’t. It doesn’t make me sad to see it anymore though.

Speaking of Cole’s arm, the tests came back from analyzing the leg and it is confirmed as Osteosarcoma. There was one lymph node that was taken during surgery and it was cancer free which is good but we know the lungs are really our next hurdle so it doesn’t mean much.

He has a checkup and the staples come out Tuesday so I will update with how that went. Here are pictures from Friday night of Cole and Ella on their pillows. They love their pillows!