December 8th

Vic's operation was today, so we were up in the dark to get her to the hospital at 05:30.  After the initial check in talk, I was sent home.

About 09:30, while I was in the shower, they left a message to say she was out of surgery and in the recovery room, so I headed over to the hospital to pick her up - they'd said it would be about an hour in the recovery room until she could go home.  I waited in the parking lot until about 10:45 and called them to see how she was doing, and they said she'd probably be out at around 11:30, so I drove around for a bit, then went back and sat playing games on my phone.

At about 12:20, they called to say to pick her up at 12:45, so I waited a while then drove over to the pick up area.  There they called to say she wasn't doing great, so they'd call me when she was.

I had a little old lady with a walker come and ask me if I was a Lyft driver, which I wasn't, but I told her they're supposed to have that stupid pink moustache.  I'd probably have run her home if I'd known when exactly Vic was going to be discharged.

I got a text from Vic to say she was coming down around 13:30, so I stopped playing games on my phone and watched the door until she arrived around 13:45.

She was feeling nauseous when going around corners, so we drove home very carefully, and she went to bed.  She was very sore.

The vet had called her phone, rather than mine, and wanted to talk.  I called them, and it seems Tilly has an elevated alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level - normal is between 5 and 160, and she's at 300 and something, indicating possibly liver cancer.  We had a long chat about quality vs quantity, and I figured we don't want to risk putting a 14 year old dog under anaesthetic to do an ultrasound when the treatment for liver cancer wouldn't be great.  As it seems her ALP level was around 250 in January 2020, I'm not particularly worried about cancer getting her before just dumb old age does.  We'll just keep an eye out for abdominal discomfort and jaundice which would suggest liver problems that we should look into.