Poor Riley

As mentioned in prior posts, we've been on a weight loss mission with Riley for a couple of years now.  At his heaviest, he hit 60 pounds.  As of a couple of weeks ago, he weighed in at 36 pounds.  It's hard to believe he's lost this much, and it hasn't been an easy road, but we know we're adding years to his life by getting him back to a healthy weight.  Last month, I took him to the vet for his annual exam.  The vet noticed a growth on his back/side, which has probably been there for a while, but we wouldn't have noticed before when he was heavier.  She tested it and found out it wasn't cancerous, but recommended that we have it removed because she believed it would continue to grow, and possibly start to inhibit his movement.  He had his surgery this past Wednesday, and poor guy has been having a rough recovery ever since. 

When I first picked him up from the vet, he was moving super slowly, and would stop to take lots of breaks just on the initial trip out to the car.  His incision site looked pretty horrible, but they told me it was normal.  He had a drain installed, and they warned me that a decent amount of fluid would be coming out of it over the next few days.  Brace yourselves, the following picture isn't pretty:

 Day 1

The white thing hanging out is the drain and everything below that is fluid, not an open wound.  He was very lethargic the first night home.  I picked him up to take him outside for a couple of bathroom breaks, and I was so worried to touch anything or hurt him in any way.  I tried to clean the area, but I could tell it hurt him, so I just let him be.  When we woke up the next morning, the area below the drain was completely cleaned, so I guess he couldn't stand the fluid on him.  

  Day 2

He got a lot of his energy back on Day 2 and was moving around well.  The problem, however, was that he wouldn't leave the drain alone!  He kept messing with it and even got one of the staples out that was holding it to his body.  We yelled at him as much as we could to get him to stop each time he disturbed it, but we couldn't watch him every minute of the day.  Eventually we had to buy him the cone of shame.

  Not happy, guys

Now we can finally stop worrying that he's going to pull the whole darn drain out of his body, but we have to look at this sad panda instead.  I'm sorry, Bubba.  Just a few more days.