Merry Christmas!!!

It's Christmas day and we're officially 9 days post-op, woo!  We can take Heidi's stitches out anywhere from 10-14 days post-op, but I'll probably wait until Tuesday or Wednesday just to be on the safe side.  We have still had easy sailing the past few days.  My only small concern is a little bit of swelling on her knee.  It's a round squishy swollen area very similar to all the swelling that had moved down to her ankle (which is now gone!).  So hopefully her body will slowly absorb the fluid or whatever is in there and we'll be good.

Heidi has been off her pain medicine now for 5ish days and she's not quite as calm as she was before.  We doubled the amount of trazodone (the calming drug) once we stopped the pain meds but it doesn't keep her as quiet as I'd like.  This is one of the experimental drug studies we're in.  It definitely calms her some, but she's still moving around more than I'd like.  She's also probably tired of being restricted to our living room... I'm sure I'd get a little stir crazy cooped up for this long.

Unfortunately, Heidi is not able to travel in her condition, so we spent Christmas here, just the 3 of us.  It was weird not being with extended family today, but we had a very enjoyable Christmas.  Last night we had dinner and presents with my parents since they're close by and went to the Christmas Eve service at their church (one of my absolute favorite things about Christmas!)  Then this morning, Alex, Heidi and I had our little Christmas present time.  Heidi was excited about the bones and gingerbread girl Santa got her!  We also made a delicious Christmas dinner, but I won't go into that since this blog is supposed to be about Heidi!  We really missed our families this year, but enjoyed our first Christmas as Mr and Mrs!

love the gingerbread girl Santa brought me!

Tomorrow Alex goes back to work so I'll be on my own carrying Heidi out to use the bathroom.  The good news is I practiced tonight and I actually can pick her up and carry her down and back up the stairs.  Go me!  I'm stronger than I thought- she weighs 70 lbs!  I don't have to go back to work until Wednesday.    When the time comes to take out her stitches, I'll take a picture to post so you can see how big the incision is and what it looks like.  I actually haven't even seen it.  The vet put a bandage on it and somehow it's managed to stay on.  They said to leave it on as long as possible to protect the incision and keep her from messing with it.  It has worked wonders and we haven't had to use the e-collar since the first day so I'm sure Heidi is thankful as well.  Well, that's all for now... Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Got my Christmas bandana on!