He has continued to do great. I was hoping to get the staples out today or tomorrow, but our surgeon is on vacation until Thursday and the IMS can't fit him in for an ACTH stim until Friday. They said it would be okay to keep the staples in a couple extra days so I don't have to make two separate trips. I will drop him off Friday morning and they'll take care of both the staples and the ACTH while he is there, since I have to work all day.
Actually, I realized I forgot part of the drama with this whole thing in our previous posts. I chose this clinic based on the recommendation to see one specific IMS. This IMS did our monitoring all last year and the workup prior to surgery. The night before the surgery I find out that our IMS had a major family emergency and will be out for over three weeks! There was another IMS (older lady but pretty new to that practice) in the hospital who was going to be handling Winston post-op! I talked them into a short 10 minute meeting with this new IMS upon dropping off for surgery to quickly recap everything and meet her, but I was nervous! Our regular IMS is still out of town, so this fill-in IMS will be doing the ACTH this week. I am glad things are going well but I am looking forward to seeing our regular IMS as soon as she is back on Sept 1. I think even if things are perfect on Friday we will still schedule with her to check in once she is back.
As of today, Winston is completely off of medications. He only took tramadol for a week. We had more but he didn't seem to need them. His last dose of prednisone was on Friday, and luckily he hasn't shown any signs of Addisons. I was/am a little nervous about waiting a while week before doing the stim, but things are good so far. His last antibiotic was yesterday. I moved my mattress onto the living room floor so he could continue to sleep with me without excessive jumping on and off the bed, and though it might be a little crazy, it has worked out well. Another couple days and I can move back into my bedroom!
Apparently there is some concern about the accuracy of the biopsy result from the pancreas, since it is just so rare that dogs get a benign pancreas tumor. A second opinion on the histopathology has been ordered just to be sure its really benign and make sure we don't need to plan another surgery soon to remove part of his pancreas. The surgeon emailed me that she was going on vacation and we could talk about it more on Friday at the staple removal appointment.
But overall, he's done better than my wildest hopes and expectations. He's been going to work with me and no one can believe that he had this major, risky surgery less than two weeks ago! If not for the awkward shaving on all his legs and a bare belly, you probably wouldn't be able to tell at all.