When I was at WSU yesterday, Dr. Fidel asked me how blind Callie was doing after her brain tumor radiation treatment back in April. I told her it had been a long slog, and for a few months we began to wonder if the old Callie was ever going to come back. She was pretty much zoned out most of the time. We'd see brief glimpses of her former self — she'd start grooming someone, for example — but it didn't last long and she'd revert to what we called her "lost" state.
We didn't know how much of it was due to the inner ear problem she developed during her stay at WSU, the radiation or the phenobarbital. Well, we finally opted to take her off the phenobarbital altogether several weeks ago, and that's when the "real" Callie started returning. Not only has her personality returned, but the seizures haven't … showing that the radiation worked to shrink her brain tumor.
Alayne got the photo above of Callie in the living room a couple of days ago, and that's the Callie we used to know. Before we took her off the phenobarbital, she wouldn't or couldn't even get on the dog cots. Now she's back up on them all the time, and in her preferred sleeping position — upside down.
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Update on Gabe: He had his surgery this afternoon and I just found out a few minutes ago from his case manager, Al, that he came through it in great shape. The surgeon told me this morning that they planned to cut through the skin along the top ridge of Gabe's nose, peel it back, then remove a section of bone about 8 centimeters by 1 centimeter, and then scoop out the tumor. They will cover the missing bone gap with the skin flap and eventually tissue will grow back over the hole, underneath the skin, so it is permanently covered like a tight drum.
(We actually did something similar on a blind horse a few years ago … drilled a one-inch hole into his sinus cavity and covered it back up with skin. A couple of months later, you couldn't tell there wasn't any bone underneath.)
The surgeon said that because of the nature of the tumor and its location, they'd end up leaving microscopic bits of cancerous tissue behind, but that's what the radiation is designed to clean up. Overall, the surgeon was very optimistic about Gabe's long-term prognosis. He will come back to the ranch next week, recuperate for a couple of weeks, and then we will take him back to WSU to begin his radiation treatment.
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