Meg

Winner July 2007: “Meg”

Meg’s story

Meg is a regular and longstanding patient of ours here at Sandhole, one which all the staff knows well, and so when her owners brought her in with a poorly toe we were all pleased to see her (not so pleased that she wasn't well mind you!!)

Megs toe was swollen and sore and she had been licking it at home. On further investigation we found that her toe was very infected and unfortunately the claw would need to be removed.

A few days later when Meg came in to have her claw removed, vet Rai decided that because of her age it would be a good idea to do an ultrasound scan and x-ray of her abdomen to make sure all was as it should be while she was here and under anaesthetic.

Good job he did!!!

Rai’s investigations showed that Meg had an enlarged spleen, definitely not normal and so what had started off as a simple situation was now much more serious. Rai decided to let Megs toe heal properly so that there was no infection in her body before dealing with her spleen!

The spleen is an organ that animals can live without, so in this situation the best treatment is actually to completely remove it.

We booked Meg into theatre and her spleen was removed, it was enormous! Removing the spleen tends to come with quite a lot of blood loss as the spleen stored blood in the body, so Meg was put onto a drip and given lots of pain relief. We sent a sample of her spleen off to the laboratory for analysis and Meg started down the road to recovery.

Everyone was amazed at how well Meg did after surgery. She really is a lovely dog, she allowed the team to look after her and treat her while she was in the hospital, sometimes we had to do some uncomfortable things, but she was always happy to get some attention!

We were so pleased when Meg went home, wagging her tail as normal and feeling much better.

When the results of the laboratory analysis came back we were thrilled to bits that there was no cancer in Megs spleen, there was absolutely no reason why Meg shouldn't continue to go from strength to strength.

A well deserved Braveheart this month to Meg, a dogs who’s infected toenail led to major abdominal surgery and who stole everyone’s hearts
 

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