Surgical Stress- It's Complicated...

I'm not sure where to begin.

First and foremost, my Honey is home with us following another surgery this morning to correct one of her two failed surgery knees.

The surgeon, the best in the this entire region, has only seen 3 in 5,000 surgeries go this way. It really sucks when your dog is the one with the 1/10th of a percent chance complication.

In addition to her tibial crest fracture which wouldn't have been that bad, two of her screws had sheared, causing the whole plate to shift and the tibial plateau to return to it's pre surgical angle.

Now, the crux was how to fix it...he couldn't touch the two broken screws, so he moved the plate and did another placement. The crappy thing about that placement, and it was the ONLY place to go without shattering her knee...was that there is now a screw head sticking up in her joint. He doesn't feel this will be in the way YET, but there is no way to know. He used locking hardware

plates and screws this time (where before he had not).

Additionally, he had to drive two other pins in to stabilize the fracture, then added a tensioning wire for additional support, which now runs through one of the now vacant screw holes.

Since were are in unchartered waters here, we really have no idea if and how this repair will hold.

He is recommending that if it is successful, that in 6 months, we remove all hardware from this leg. Assuming her other surgery leg is doing well, we'll leave that hardware alone- he doesn't like to remove unless necessary.

So, we have nothing to do now but wait and see. I'm trying to stay strong. He said of the three he's seen that were similar, one dog was 'never really the same' and the other two fared well.

That's the news...I wish it were better, but Honey is still her cute little wiggly-waggly butted, licking, happy little pink nosed pitty. So, from her I take my strength and good humor- it's all we can do at this point.