Home Is Where the Navy Ships Us!: Ron's Surgery

After our last ordeal the end of September we thought we would be free of worries for our little man Ron. Not the case actually! Last Thursday, Tim noticed that he was squinting his left eye and when we took a closer look we noticed that it was getting cloudy. We didn't think much of it, he plays a little too rough with Zoe sometimes. We went to bed Thursday night and by Friday morning we could tell it definitely was something much worse. A small "bubble" like film had appeared. Our vet took one look at it and said that it looked like a bad scratch which had caused a corneal ulcer. He gave us some ointment for his eye and sent us home with a follow-up on Monday. Monday morning came and Ron's eye had cleared, the ulcer was gone and it was just a bit cloudy. However our vet revealed that his eye was actually getting WORSE and recommend us to an eye specialist in north San Diego county. He suggested we go that afternoon or we might risk him losing his sight in that eye. Within the hour we were back in another waiting room and met Dr. Steele. She was so friendly and knowledgeable about our little man's eyes she immediately knew what was wrong. He didn't have a scratch, but he was born with a patch of hairs under his eyelid (common in small breed dogs). The hairs were brushing on his eye and caused a bacterial infection that was slowly melting his cornea. Ron needed surgery that afternoon to correct the problem. So again, I left the vet without him hoping for him to pull through another procedure. That night I received a call from Dr. Steele, the surgery went great and they were waiting for him to wake up from his anesthesia. She also mentioned that the blood work she had done on him pre-surgery was very different from the blood work he had done just two weeks earlier. His white blood cell count was off the charts (probably due to the infection) and he was highly anemic. Anemia is rare in dogs not as common as in humans. Dr. Steele said we were able to pick Ron up the next morning but she wanted to refer us to an internal medicine specialist right up the road to see what was causing his anemia. We have our first appointment tomorrow afternoon. Please keep Ron in your thoughts tonight, he's been through a lot these past few weeks and we know he will pull through. He is a trooper and even came home from his surgery without an eye patch (we thought we were going to have a pirate pug running around the house). The eye hospital even sent him home with his e-collar decorated in Halloween stickers (see pictures below...)!