Besides, this was a pretty big deal during the last couple of weeks and I haven't said much about it. Emma has had chronic ear infections pretty much her whole life. The vet has told us that some dogs are just more prone to them than others and it is difficult to pin point exactly what the cause is. We were treating her current infection during the week before Christmas the way we always do when it flares up, only this time it was painful enough to her that she would often shake her head violently to deal with it. This led to an infectious bubble on the inside of her ear flap called a hemotoma. If left untreated it can cause permanent hearing loss as well as many other health problems. Regardless of all that, she was in obvious pain so we took her in for treatment on the day before Christmas Eve. The vet said she would need emergency surgery in order to give her some relief so, of course, we agreed. This was still a tough pill to swallow (no pun intended!) considering we recently spent close to $1500 on her last surgery just a few months ago!
To make a long story short, she had surgery on the 23rd and came home with a cone on the 24th needing constant supervision. Emma is a very nervous dog to begin with and the cone managed to freak her out even more! None of us were getting any rest. Thankfully they make anti-anxiety medication for dogs and once we started giving that to her on a regular basis we all started to sleep at night.
A few days ago we were able to get rid of the cone, much to Emma's relief, followed a day later by the bandages and now we just have to put drops in her ear twice daily to clear up any residual infection so this won't happen again. I NEVER want this to happen again!
Sometime this week the stitches holding the two slices of her ear together will come out and we'll hope for the best. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be at least a year before we have to reach so deeply in our pockets again for another vet bill!!
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