On the Road to Recovery

Thursday's run/walk: 4.25 mi on the dreadmill
Friday: nada; had to drop Grover off for surgery before work
Saturday: Garmin says 5.5 mi in 1:06:20 (hit 5m right as it rolled over from 59:59 to 1 hr)
Sunday: Garmin says 5.25 mi in 1:03:22 (hit 5 mi at 58:50; walked the last .25 as cool-down)

Mileage last week: 24.5 mi

Grover-boy went in for surgery on Friday. The originally thought, based on x-ray and ultrasound, that there was a large mass around his spleen and it had to come out. Reading up on it, there's a risk of potentially fatal arrhythmia after the spleen is removed, so we were a bit nervous about the surgery and outcome. (Seriously - Google needs to have something pop up saying STOP FREAKING YOURSELF OUT if you search on medical stuff for more than 15 minutes.)

(Speaking of, if you are all all squeamish, don't scroll all the way to the bottom.)

Once he got into surgery, it turned out that the growth was on a lobe of his liver, not his spleen. Interesting. So, the surgeon removed that lobe. This was actually better news - the liver is the one organ that has the potential to bounce back a bit, so what's left should take over normal liver-duties nicely. They checked out his other organs (including the spleen), and they looked pretty good.

While he was under, they also removed some kind of growth next to one dew claw, another from the top of that same foot, and a bigger one off one knee. The knee incision was much bigger than I expected, but I'm sure they got all of whatever it was. We still need to hear back from pathology on what all this stuff is, but in the meantime, Grover is home and back sleeping in his usual spot by the front door.

Not as bad as a poodle cut. It will grow back fast.

He looks a bit thinner now, even with the bruising developing on his abdomen. The liver growth was definitely not small.

That really needed to come out.

Now he's on antibiotics and pain meds, and will go back in about 10 days to have his sutures removed. He's supposed to take it easy for a while - hopefully most of the holiday deliveries are done, so he won't be jumping up and barking every hour.