An Update on Belle Part 2

Well, 5 o'clock came without word from the animal hospital.  Nancy being the concerned parent that she is, decided to call to see what she could find out.  I told her to not bother the hospital because the surgeon most likely was still in surgery.  We knew that there was at least 4 surgeries scheduled for today. 

Nancy got ahold of one of the nurses in the ICU.  The surgeon was still in surgery as I suspected.  They had several emergency cases come in that extended the surgeon's day.  From what the nurse told Nancy was that Belle was doing fine.  She has won over the hearts of the staff and every time someone comes over to her cage to straighten it up, she's there all smiles and ready to jump in their arms. 

That news seemed to help appease Nancy for awhile.  The nurse she spoke to said that we should hear something between 6PM and 7PM.  Well that came and went and she was getting kinda worried.  I told her that either she's still in surgery, busy calling all the patient's parents, or decided she'd call tomorrow because it was late.  So we decided to go to dinner.  We went and got sandwiches and came back.

Around 8PM we heard from the surgeon.  She said that she had to implant around 7 prosthetic rings to support her airway.  She needed rings that went down to her first ribs on her rib cage.  We were informed that her practice was to keep the dogs intubated for 45 minutes after getting out of surgery to make sure there isn't any potential for paralysis.  For that 45 minutes the dog is in the lap of a nurse getting some TLC.  We were told that at almost exactly at the 45 minute mark Belle was letting everyone know that she was ready to get that tube out of her throat.  Once she was extubated, we were told that if it wasn't for the swelling you'd never know anything was wrong.  Then the surgeon told Nancy that she had to lower her voice so Belle couldn't hear, but she was absolutely amazed at her progress.  She's progressing faster than she ever expected or has seen and if things keep on this path, she might be home by Wednesday night.

Belle's next hurdle is going to be eating.  She'll get her first solid food tomorrow.  It will be wet dog food (food from a can) rolled up into tiny balls.

That's all we know at this point and thanks for all of those people that had our little girl in their thoughts