Hi friends. What a three weeks it has been. This has been one of the biggest emotional rollercoasters I’ve been on and I just want to say how grateful I am for this community and everyone’s words of encouragement and advice (thank you Pam, Stacy and Jerry for your sweet comments on our last post!)!
I’ll start this out by saying the past two days for Finn have been better – not perfect, but definitely better. Today even had some helicopter tail in it!
Now to recap the last week… buckle up.
After we started the amantadine last week, Finn showed no signs of improvement. It was constant up and down and discomfort. His elbow was destroyed from getting up and down off the floor so much. He would lie in his weird position and cry if you tried to manipulate him at all. I researched like crazy and started to think this was all phantom limb pain – he had all the classic symptoms. Maybe even exacerbated by his scapula being left in. (I had no idea leaving or not leaving the scapula in was even a thing until reading about it here after his amputation.) By Thursday, I had no idea what to do. I don’t think he had slept all week and we had exhausted all medications/therapies. We were all mentally and physically depleted. I ended up calling another surgeon for a second opinion. He recommended taking him off all his meds except for the carprofen as he thought it could all be a side effect from them. By the next day, he was not better but worse so we brought him in to get looked at. After two vets examined him, they decided nothing is wrong and sent us home with trazodone. I felt like I was going crazy. I know he acts differently at the vet than at home probably because his adrenaline is pumping, but something was wrong. When I asked about phantom limb pain and my strong feeling that that is what we were dealing with, it was brushed off. They told me not to give him any more medications still except his carprofen and the trazodone as needed. Once we got home, he was back to his usual severe discomfort and whining.
Now I know I’m not a vet but I know my dog and I knew something was wrong. I made the executive decision that this was phantom limb pain we were dealing with and he needed something. And not trazodone. Later that night I restarted his gabapentin at the lowest dose. I also restarted the amantadine on Saturday. Lastly, I converted one of my long sleeve compression shirts for him to help with 1. protecting his poor destroyed elbow and 2. keeping some pressure on his muscles to maybe help with twitching/spasms.
Now I don’t know if it was the couple day break from all his medications then restarting, or the shirt, or divine intervention but by Saturday, there was SO much improvement. Today seemed to be continued improvement so fingers crossed we are going in the right direction!
I have also reached out to a local vet who does acupuncture as I’ve read good things about that helping with phantom limb pain.
We are gladly still excepting all the love and healing you’re sending. It is greatly appreciated! Oh and Happy Mother’s Day to all you amazing, strong mommas whose fur babies are lucky to have you (especially those 3-legged ones) 💕
Xx,
Finn and Casey
(p.s. picture is of Finn and his sister Charlie sun bathing last week)
Hi Casey! What an amazing, fierce, and intuitive mama bear you are! It is terrible that Finn went through such time with his pain not under control and all of my fingers & toes are crossed that he is firmly on the path to recovery now. Good luck with the acupuncture and please keep the adorable photos of Finn (and Charlie) coming! Happy Mother’s Day to you! xoxo Stacy