Nora, the tripod rescued from Iran
I know it took some time, but we finally managed to get some Nora video’s uploaded to youtube.
The first video was taken the day after Nora arrived at our house. She still had her leg stump 🙁
The second video was taken when Nora was trying to master walking on wood and tile floors with the help of her traction socks, and the third a few months later when she had fully mastered ANY flooring.
Such a brave, strong and HAPPY girl!
Just a snapshot of us and Nora!
Nora is the embodiment of happy. We love her so much!
We were all surprised when phantom limb/neuropathic pain set in for Nora, over a month after her amputation. It all really makes sense though. 2 days after she came to our home she went in for her amputation – followed by 2 weeks of heavy duty pain meds. Then once recovered from her first surgery, she went in for spay surgery, followed by another 10 days of pain meds.
Initially, we were prescribed more pain meds (Gabapentin) – which did take care of the neuropathic pain. We didn’t like the thought of having her on pain meds for life though, so we started researching alternative treatments. We found a lot of articles about acupuncture being really effective for these kinds of pains – even the US Army used it for amputees.
We first weaned her off the Gabapentin – and as suspected the phantom limb pains came right back. Nora had her first acupuncture appointment 2 weeks ago, and we were amazed to see that she had NO incidents of pain the following week. She went in for her 2nd session yesterday, and still no phantom limb pain. We plan on doing 4 more sessions for now, and then follow up as needed. It is such a huge relief to have found a way to help her that doesn’t involve long term use of pain meds! 
Today has been a tough day for Nora. She has experienced brief neuropathic pain before, but only for very brief moments (3 seconds at most), and she snapped out of it immediately and went back to doing whatever she was doing before the pain struck. Today she have had several major incident of phantom limb 🙁
The first one happened on our morning walk. One second she is walking along, wagging her tail and sniffing trees – the next she is screaming/high pitch yelping and circling trying to lick her non existing leg. It lasted for over a minute!! The poor girl was so scared, and in pain. I sat down with her after, and gave her one of the pain relieving massages I found links to on this site. She loves those massages, and it calms her down as well. After about 10 minutes she tried to get up and walk again, twice, but each time she yelped and sat back down again. At that point I just wanted to get her home, so I picked her up and carried her for several blocks. She gave me many kisses while I was carrying her. After about one block of carrying her, some guy parked in an SUV rolled down his window and said mockingly to ‘put her back down and let her walk herself’….. I told him to mind his business and that the poor dog was in pain and unable to walk. At that time he saw she was an amputee, and apologized. She decided to walk the last block to our house, and to my great relief she seemed back to normal.
The second attack happened on our afternoon walk. Thankfully we were just down the block, and I carried her right back inside and put her in her bed. I called my vet, who is prescribing Gabapentin for her to use for the next month or so. In the meantime he said I could use the Tremadol I had left over from amputation and spay surgery recovery. We will also look into acupuncture, as we’ve read several articles about it being very helpful in treating neuropathic pain. Anything to avoid Nora having to experience this again….
This has been an eventful week. Nora went in for her spay surgery this Monday and we were reminded that no surgery is ever ‘routine’. We weren’t even nervous, as she had made is so brilliantly through her amputation and recovery. Mid day we got an update call from our vet – there had been complications during Nora’s spay!!! Nora was ok, but due to excessive bleeding from a dropped ovarian pedicle, our vet recommended we transfer her to an ER vet overnight for observation.
We picked Nora up around 6pm, after she had been watched closely post surgery at our regular vet’s office. She was groggy but up and walking. We immediately transported her to Animal Medical Center where she would be monitored overnight.
Thankfully, Nora made it through the night without any further bleeding or complications. We’re still glad we took the extra precaution of having her monitored overnight. Better safe than sorry!!
Nora is now back home and back to being her normal silly and playful self.
The first photo is Nora being comforted by her brother, George, immediately after arriving home from AMC. The second is Nora the next morning – literally having more fun than a barrel full of monkeys!
