Jon's Corner of the Whirled » dog http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog Life in Portland Oregon as a Software Developer Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:17:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Post Splenectomy experience… http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog/2007/12/16/post-splenectomy-experience/ http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog/2007/12/16/post-splenectomy-experience/#comments Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:14:48 +0000 Jon http://www.getchabug.com/Jon/blog/archives/2007/12/16/post-splenectomy-experience/ As a follow up to my previous posting, our dog, Devon is back to his old happy self.
Devon several years ago. You wouldn’t know that he had his spleen removed except that his belly is missing some hair. It seems to be growing back. I doubt a human would have recovered from that procedure as well or as quickly.

He went in to the vet one day, stayed there over night for observation, and came home the next day. He never needed a collar to keep him from chewing on the staples they used to close him up. He had the staples removed the a week or so later.

It is amazing to see his personality reimerge.

]]> http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog/2007/12/16/post-splenectomy-experience/feed/ 1 Unhappy Poodle and his spleen… http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog/2007/11/27/unhappy-poodle-and-his-spleen/ http://getchabug.com/Jon/blog/2007/11/27/unhappy-poodle-and-his-spleen/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:30:42 +0000 Jon http://www.getchabug.com/Jon/blog/archives/2007/11/27/unhappy-poodle-and-his-spleen/ Our dog, Devon, hasn’t been feeling well lately. He stopped eating, and wouldn’t do much other than just lay in his bed. Lisa took him to the vet, where they did an abdominal x-ray. Something looked amiss. His intestines were compressed by something. The vet suggested an ultrasound to determine the cause of the compression. It turns out, one ultrasound and a biopsy later that he has some benign tumors on his spleen. One of them is 6 cm x 6 cm. Since there didn’t seem to be any cancer associated with the tumors, the vet suggested that a splenectomy would help him with the issue, and that he didn’t really need a spleen to survive. At this point I asked myself: what does the spleen do? The answer, as always, is available at Wikipedia. It turns out, it is possible to survive without a spleen, gallbladder, or appendix. I’m sure some fiendish mind has considered this as another possible form of weight loss.

All of these procedures we have done may sound trivial, but they have been expensive: the xray visit was $450. The Ultrasound visit was $650. The splenectomy visit is set to cost $2000. I just hope that this solves his issues. He is a sweet dog, and we all want to see him back to his old friendly self. Note to self: look in to pet insurance before the pets get sick…

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