We noticed Lola had developed a limp on the morning of December 11, and were hoping that maybe she just slept on it funny, or awkwardly jumped off the bed. She wasn't any better when I got home, and was favoring her right front leg. Hopeful it was just a sprain, I called our vet to see if we should start Lola on tramadol, which we did - 1.5 tablets, twice a day.
Lola continued to limp around, so off we went to see Dr. C on December 22. She determined the issue was with Lola's right shoulder, which she was favoring, not extending fully and clearly uncomfortable with during the exam. An x-ray showed a little something going on, but "nothing too exciting," as Dr. C likes to say. My best explanation is that it looked like a couple little "nodules" on the sides on the shoulder joint.
Dr. C explained that Lola's breed make-up is prone to bone tumors (and some of the horrible things that go along with them), and while she didn't think that's what we were looking at, she couldn't rule it out completely at this time. If it were a bone tumor, she'd expect to see "a mess" of bone and fragments on the x-ray - but we did not. So, she was hopeful that what we're seeing is arthritis and opted to treat it as such for now. We increased her tramadol to 2 tablets, three times a day and if things weren't getting better in a couple of days, she armed us with a prescription for an additional medication to add in (forgive me, but the name is escaping me at the moment).
The next couple of days were quite awful, with Lola in obvious pain, which I'm hoping was in part due to her shoulder being manipulated in so many ways during the exam. We've had ups and downs since, and opted to start the second medication this past Friday.
Dr. C touched based through one of her techs on Saturday to see how Lola was doing. When I indicated she was still limping, not getting around too well and in some obvious pain, she spoke to Dr. C and got back to me a short time later. Because we had just added in the second medication the day before, she wanted us to wait it out a few days to see if it begins to kick in and help. In the meantime, she suggested we might add in a cold press a few times a day, for 5 minutes at a time. We don't have a lot of room to move on pain meds without pulling Lola off of her low-dose prednisone, and then waiting a couple of weeks to get it out of her system... and praying her auto-immune disease doesn't flare back up (she's now down to a "next to nothing" dose of 1/2 tablet every 3 days, but we're not brave enough to stop it completely, as we know if we had to start things over at a high dose of pred, she would not do well at all - it nearly killed her the first time).
So, we continue to watch, and hope, for improvement. Lola is normally the dog who will jump at the chance to go outside at any time... yet right now we nearly have to force her to go out to do her business (with a great deal of assistance from a harness and towel sling). It absolutely kills me to hear her cry in pain, and see her so miserable. I just hope things take a turn for the better this week. If she does continue to limp and have issues, we will recheck the x-rays in another week or two. If things still look like arthritis, we'll then talk about starting physical therapy and take things from there.
Please, send some good healing vibes Lola's way... she could really use them right now.
