Mercy’s first day certainly went better than expected, and last night was good, too. The air mattress deflated on us, so I just gave Mercy my pillows and we camped on the floor. We slept pretty well, waking up at 3am for one of our pills. This morning she was acting pretty restless, so I took her for another “carry” around the block, and took her to work with me to show everyone how well she was doing and pick up her Tramadol for later today when her fentanyl patch comes off. I noticed that she is acting pretty painful on her left hind leg today. I’m hoping it’s just a combination of compensation and balance working new areas, and/or that her left leg is the one that gets held on my hip when she wants to be carried. As much as I can, I’ve been making her lay down, not get carried and not walk to try and give that leg time to recover. Maybe I’ll heat pack it later tonight when it cools off outside. Around noon, we curled up on the couch together, her as close as she could get to me on my chest. She ended up cradled between my left arm and chest on her back sleeping. After the nap, I started worrying about how I could help her get up from this precarious position, when out of nowhere I see her incision site trying to move feverishly, and she starts trying to roll backwards and cry and really freak out and scare me. I’m not sure if the pain of trying to move it caused the reaction, or if this was our first experience with phantom limb pain. We are getting ready to pull off her fentanyl patch, perhaps it’s losing efficacy and that’s why she’s acting a little more depressed today. I’m crossing my fingers that the transition to pills will go smoothly, but I’m a bit scared. All I know is that I don’t like it when her “wiggle butt” is broken, and I hope tomorrow brings a better day. Can’t say that I wasn’t warned that we would have our ups and downs the first couple weeks. I was just hoping her 2nd day would be as fantastic as her first. I would really like for her back leg not to be hurting her right now since that was one of my biggest fears about the amputation, is that something would happen to another leg.
On the bright side, one of my other concerns, how she would tackle the obstacle of having a bowel movement, was addressed at 3am this morning. We had to run outside quickly and she did the best “this? this is old news” job ever. Looks like we’re getting the pottying down pretty quickly. Mercy is definitely proving to be a somewhat independent and strong girl throughout this. She certainly doesn’t want help, and is braver than I am through it all.
Happy Friday, everyone.