A Miracle Recovery Made Easier, Thanks to ASAP Donations

Sometimes, amputation surgery recovery doesn’t go as planned. Aya had an extremely tough time, and thanks to the donations to the Tripawds Amputation Surgery Assistance Program, her people have less of a vet bill burden and can focus on helping her get well.

This Tripawds ASAP grant is made possible by the charitable contributions of Tripawds fans like you. Thank you for your support!

Aya Fights Through and Survives an Amputation Recovery Gone Wrong

Most amputation recoveries are routine. On rare occasions, sadly they aren’t. Here is Aya’s unusual recovery story, as told by her mom in her ASAP application.

Our girl has had a very rough healing journey. She has had so much difficulty adjusting that it has undermined her healing.

It had even rained that day we brought her back after her surgery, she slipped on the wet concrete on her way to the car.

The first day home, she continued to bleed in the middle of the night and screamed in pain, we rushed her to a 24 hour clinic. The next morning, we returned to her original vet and they patched her up again.

A week into her healing, the strain of her learning how to poop without another leg, her constant slipping and falling, kept undermining her stitches. Her bleeding looked concerning. We brought her back to her vet. They said she was fine. They sent us home. She was still scheduled to have her stitches removed in another week.

And that following week was horrific for her and us as her stitches only got worse despite following their instructions.

We didn’t know just how bad it got until we finally returned to the vet again and they gasped at how ghastly her wound had become. They fixed her stitches and drained so much fluid from her, they had to keep her again for another night.

Then the doctor gave us a very difficult phone call…They could only suspect because of how terrible her stitches were healing, that the cancer had already metastasized when they cut it, and that it was the remaining cancer that was preventing her from healing properly.

A biopsy to confirm a remaining cancer would have required sedation that could have killed her in her weakened state. The radiation therapy to treat such a cancer would have been beyond our imagination of what we could have afforded anyways…

So the answer was clear. We were told at some point within days or weeks, that we might have to make that dreaded decision to let her go. That she was likely in so much pain…

We rejected the biopsy because of the risk with no reward. At this point, we forgot about the financial burden. Everything blurred over the thought of losing her.

There was a lot of crying, a lot of regret, a lot of blame.

That if only we had the money sooner to remove her lump to begin with, that this would not become such a hopeless cause where she suffered even more for nothing. They told us the chance that it might just be an infection instead of remaining cancer were extremely slim…

We got her back home. They upped her pain meds to make her comfortable. They gave her stronger antibiotics just in case, though it was clearly something they only agreed to do to soften our woes with a kind hope. The doctor seemed very careful not to give us any more hope, which was very understandable…

We spoiled her with steaks and salmon and pork chops every day. When we’d cry to her, she would cry back and lick the tears off our face as if to tell us not to cry.

Then a week passed… Her stitches were getting better. She was finally getting used to walking on 3 legs. She wasn’t slipping or tumbling anymore.

Then another week passed… Her stitches looked closed. No bleeding. No oozing. They told us that the presence of cancer would not even allow this to happen properly!

It’s been another month now, and I am happy to report now that they were mistaken!

She has bounced back to her old self!

Still stumbling when she gets ahead of herself with her new three legs, but she isn’t at all fazed.

It feels like having another chance with her, it feels so lucky that the vets were wrong this time, but the financial burden still remains. This grant would help us tremendously, simply because the absence of debt means for a more present mind.

I wish we had that presence of mind earlier, so that she didn’t need to suffer along the way like this because we had to wait so long for her to get treated, namely because of said financial constraints…

She’s such a funny dog, nothing really happens to her without it being a story, it only makes sense that she bounced back after her vets marked her for death.

After all of this, we don’t think she realizes how much of a fuss we were making for her, she is still climbing trash bins for tossed out baloney.

Thank you for this opportunity, and thank you for listening!

Thank you Donors for Helping Another Amazing Tripawd!