Chester Day 1 - Surgery

Have I told you about Chester’s boundless enthusiasm for life? OK, I have. With the bone in his hip and upper leg necrosing by the hour he must have been in so much pain. Yet there was never a whimper from him over the 10 days leading up to his diagnosis. In fact he seemed to forget from time to time that he was even in pain.

When we arrived at Dr David Lidbetter’s surgery Chester was beside himself with excitement, his big black paws skidding on the vinyl flooring, and looking such a fraud.

“What’s your dog here for?”, another client asked, trying to sound solicitous as she clutched a plastic carrier containing a haughty looking feline I was to discover was suffering with a torn cruciate ligament.

“Oh, he’s having a total hip replacement”. I tried to convey the gravity of the situation, but it wasn’t easy with a squirming puppy on the end of the lead, grinning in his doggy way and wagging his tail at everyone who passed by.

You could just imagine them thinking doubtfully, “Oh, yeah?”

This will give you an idea of the amazing hardware Chester will carry around for the rest of his life.

It’s a Biomedtrix BFX cementless prosthetic hip.

We were warned that there was a possibility that the necrosis might have spread too far, and David would not find enough healthy leg bone into which to fit the new hip. I’ll leave you to imagine what would have been the alternative in that case.

What a relief when we heard, late in the afternoon, that the surgery had gone smoothly!