The Mysterious Limp Part 2

As you can imagine, Chili was not impressed by this whole situation. Staying at home sucks when you’re used to hanging out with your friends five days a week. It sucked for Brad too since he would drive home every day at lunch to let her out and spend time with her. I felt bad for both of them and had to come up with something to make it easier. I was talking about it with Michele from Connective Training and we came up with the idea of a babysitter. I know, don’t laugh. So, in comes Jas, a friend that I met through Michele. Jas has a beautiful pittie named Cali and I knew she wouldn’t let Chili boss her around. Throughout the month of December, Jas would come in at least twice a week to spend a few hours just hanging out and chillin’ with Chili. It made a difference and Chili loved spending time with her.

I wish I could tell you that the therapeutic laser treatments were working, but it didn’t seem like they were. Although, Chili did enjoy them and would just lay there relaxed unless she heard a noise or a person came in. She had to know everything that was going on. There were days that she walked just fine, and then there were days that by the time we walked the 100ft to the end of the driveway, she would be limping so badly, she could barely walk. She would hold up her leg and look at me then walk back to the house using 3 legs. It was heartbreaking. Other than holding up her leg, you wouldn’t know she had a problem. She never winced, or whined, or showed any other signs of pain. This made it even harder to pinpoint the problem. My little trooper.

Of course, it couldn’t just be a simple thing to go for the laser treatments. Victoria isn’t really known for getting snow but on a couple of her appointment evenings, it had snowed and the roads weren’t that great. Not a problem if you live in a place where you get lots of snow and you change over to snow tires in the winter, but when you live in a place where you don’t get much, and you only use all season tires, it can be difficult. Snow wasn’t the only challenge. During one of her appointments, she was lounging and enjoying her treatment when I looked up and said to the technician, “there’s smoke coming from the laser cord”. He looked at me confused; I think he was trying to soak in what I just said, so I repeated it. By this time I was already laughing and he turned around, saw the smoke and pulled the cord out of the machine. Yes, I was laughing. I didn’t see cause for panic, after all, Chili wasn’t smoking, the cord was. The technician apologized again and again. It wasn’t his fault, no problem. That was the end of that treatment. Sorry Chili.

So what was next for us? At the end of the laser treatment, there was no change. We decided not to continue. At this point it was January, I was done work, and could devote my time to Chili. The next step? I asked for another set of X-Rays. I needed to see if there were any changes in her bones and discuss where to go from here. I know he told me that it wasn’t cancer, and he was confident with that statement, but since she seemed to be getting worse I felt that another set of Xrays would show us something.

So, under she goes again for another set of Xrays. I asked him to Xray her whole leg and shoulder, right down to her toes. He didn’t think it was necessary, but I insisted. If she was going to be put under, I wanted to make it worthwhile. The result, there was no real change. Frustrating. Now what?