Disco dog

Zachary came home Friday afternoon.  The vet has referred to his condition as "disco," which the discharge papers tell me is shorthand for discospondylitis, an infection in the intervertebral disc, located specifically @ L1-L2 and T6-T7.  It requires treatment with antibiotics for at least six months, which is why we were seeing it recur after two week treatments were concluded.

He still has no use of his back legs but the front end was decidedly perkier today and he was able to walk to the house with me carrying the back end in a sling.  He's glad to be home and he will be even happier when Clay gets home tomorrow.

When you are caring for a loved one who is ill, human or canine, the goal is always to get them out of the hospital and back home. Insurance companies push for discharge for human patients for financial reasons and I was pushing for it here for the same reason.  I really couldn't afford to have him there any longer.  But the scary thing about getting your patient home is that you no longer have that professional care and backup.  It's all on you.

I got a quick lesson on transporting the dog, physical therapy for his legs, and expressing his bladder. It appears that the sling has the effect of expressing the bladder by itself, and that's ok by me.  I cleared out a corner of the kitchen nearest the door. I put down a layer of cardboard followed by a rubber pad, then a big bolster crate blanket and several more blankets on top.  That should be enough insulation under him to keep him warm and enough padding to prevent bedsores.  I set up an exercise pen around him, not to keep him from moving since he really can't, but to keep the other dogs from bothering him.

He seems pretty content with it all for now.  I hope that we'll start to see him regain his mobility so he can function normally again.