Hello, I'm Joe, Murphy's Dad. I will be telling the story from here. Murphy doesn't like to think about what happened. The trouble is, he just doesn't understand it. Like Murphy said, for three years everything was great. September 14th arrived and we went to Bushkill for Murphy's Adoption Day Hike to celebrate him being with us for three years. One week later, my wife and I would leave for our vacation. We had been planning this vacation to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary with Hawaii being the destination. Frani's parents would take care of Murphy while we were gone. No problem, they had watched him before without incident. It was September, 25, 1999. We were in Hawaii on our fourth day when we called home. We got some very disturbing news. Murphy was paralyzed and had been taken to our vet. We called the office, and spoke to the doctor on duty. He asked us what we wanted him to do. We said to everything possible. We took the next available flight home. A long 12-hour flight was ahead of us.
No one is really sure what happened. When Frani's father called him into the kitchen, he was dragging his back legs and was in pain. He was rushed to our vet. They tried a steroid treatment to see if it would shrink the inflammation. We would have to wait 24 hours for results. At this point, he still had feeling and deep pain sensation in both paws. The next day, he had gotten worse. He had no feeling or deep pain in his hindquarters. They did a Mylogram of his back and found that two discs were herniated and were compressing his spinal cord. He was then taken to the Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to undergo emergency spinal surgery. They would cut two small windows in two vertebrae so the could remove the loose disc material that was pinching his spinal cord. We landed in Philadelphia the morning after his operation. When we finally got to see him, he was sitting up in a large crate with two IVs and a catheter. According to his neurosurgeon, Dr. Bernier, the operation was successful. She brought Murphy into a room where we could get to see him alone. This was a very emotional time for the three of us. You never know how much you care for someone until something goes seriously wrong. He had a nine-inch cut up the center of his back that was held together with twenty-seven staples. Not very pretty. He still had no feeling anywhere below the damage. Dr. Bernier told us that there was some bruising on the spinal cord and there was probably some nerve damage. She gave him a 5-30% chance of walking again, not a full recovery, just the ability to walk. The return of bladder and bowel control was questionable. She also said that we would know a lot more in six weeks. We came back the next day to take him home and we were given brief instructions on his medications, care and treatment of the incision, and how to palpate him (make him urinate). This, he didn't like one bit. After this brief introduction into animal care, I carefully picked him up and carried to the car. Our boy was coming home. - - - - Just a note, there were no pictures until 3 months after his injury. We were more concerned about how to care for a paralyzed dog than documentation. |