New Improvements!

Fletch and dad out in the backyard for the first time since the surgery!

We’ve had a couple of milestones the last few days.

First and foremost, Addie got to come home on Sunday after three days in ICU at the vet hospital. She is as wiggly as ever and is doing really well. We have to give her some medication to help protect her stomach for another 10 days, but after that, she should be good as new with no lasting issues. The vet said that her kidney functions wear normal and all her blood levels were where they needed to be. She even suspected that Addie ate the pills closer to when Sam and I got home in the evening, rather than closer to when we left for work that morning, so she’s confident that we caught it quick enough and got it all flushed out of her system.

As for Fletch, he conquered the back stairs for the first time! We’ve been taking him out on the leash out the front door because there’s really only one step for him to deal with. Over the weekend, he’s shown considerable improvement and mobility on his front leg and we’ve been walking him a little further each day, so on Saturday, Sam decided to see how he’d do going up the stairs in the back (there are about 8 from the ground to the back porch). He conquered them like a champ! It was like he still had all four legs again. The next time we took him out, we decided to let him outside the in back to see if going down the stairs was as easy as going up. Before we even had a chance to kind of coax him and encourage him, he was already down, no problems at all.

We’re very excited about these promising improvements with Fletch. We’re so glad that he’s been able to adapt to this new life in a fairly seamless way.

He goes in on Wednesday to have his sutures out and as long as there is no infection or other cause for concerns, he will likely start chemotherapy that day. From what I read, we can expect a few hours of treatment and monitoring on the first trip. He’ll likely have some fatigue and could get nauseated, but we will be able to get some meds to help with that and it shouldn’t affect him too bad. We’re very anxious to start this next level of treatment so that Fletcher can get that much closer to being happy and healthy.

Stay tuned for an update on Wednesday after the vet visit!