poor winston

All night last night Winston STUNK. He smelled like ass. We couldn't figure out why - he'd just had a bath and we'd cleaned his ears, so - because I INSISTED he truly smelled like ASS - we washed his butt. But he still smelled putrid. At about 12:30am, JR leaned over the edge of the bed to pet him and scratch his head and neck, and he YELPED! And yelped again! Any rubbing on his neck or ears made him emit a piercing yelp. It scared both of us.

JR flipped up his left ear, the ear he has a growth in, and where it's always been a huge fleshy, sometimes blotchy mass and an unending amount of ear wax, is a bloody, completely black, massive growth, sticking out of his ear canal. And the stench is enough to make one gag. No wonder he'd hardly wanted to move for 2 days (we thought he'd hurt his leg).

We jumped up, got dressed, called the emergency vet specialists (that have been working W's health toward being able to fix his ears) and rushed him over. Occasionally he'd muster the energy to shake his head vigorously or try to scratch the growth out of his ear, but mostly he just laid on our laps.

Once we were finally seen, the verdict was "Yup, he needs to have that surgery *immediately*, but we don't have surgeons overnight." I just wanted them to snip that horrible mass off and stitch it up so he didn't go septic or something. I just couldn't contemplate how something that looked and smelled that bad was OK to leave attached to his little body for another minute! She said that's what necrotic flesh smells like. BLECCH! They sent us home at 3am, with the hope that the surgeon could fit W into his schedule today. They called at 7:30am with the OK, and we took him in.

It's 3:26 right now, and the doc just called to ask if it was OK to go ahead and remove the other ear canal at the same time (as we'd originally planned). Hell yes it is! Let's see - getting one ear done will cost $2500, which means getting the other one done later would be $2500 too. Or they could do them both today and the cost would be $3000. So thank god they're doing that.

The surgeon was heading into surgery with him as soon as we got off the phone. Send him your best vibes, please, because he is the sweetest, gentlest dog of all time. They'll call when they're finished to let me know how he is. He has to stay there overnight to recover, and we can go get him sometime tomorrow.

He's gonna be in for a rough recovery, with probably almost no hearing left. But he'll be free of this chronic horrible ear infection forever. Hallelujah!