Day Of

The whole reason we drove 1,566 miles was to show up at this small clinic in the middle of nowhere.

We dropped Winston off at 8:30 to the calm, soothing Dr. Durkes. He put me at ease with his comforting personality and I instantly liked him.
Dr. Durkes was always wonderful to deal with. When I called the clinic the first time about Winston I was explaining to the receptionist what was happening and she asked if I wanted to speak with Dr. Durkes, thinking that she'd take my number and he'd call me back I waited on hold. I was surprised when Dr. Durkes answered the phone.

Anyway,  after Dr. Durkes explained the procedure and what to expect we left Winston in his capable hands.
We tried to find something to do with our time, but there's really not much to do in Marion Indiana and surprisingly a lot of places are closed on Monday.

We picked Winston up at 1PM and Dr. Durkes said that it was a good sign that Winston walked himself into the exam room. Winston was wobbly on his feet from the anesthesia, but happy to see us. He drunkenly walked to each of us and waited for us to pet him.
Dr. Durkes explained the after care, which isn't much. He said that Winston needs to keep the neck brace on for at least 3 weeks, shouldn't jump, wrestle with the other dogs if he moves his neck when he does so or shake toys. Other than that we should let him do what he feels comfortable doing.

Winston is now the proud owner of 400 gold plated magnetic beads placed along the vertebra in his neck. If they work we should start seeing results within a week; slippery floors and stairs usually come first and the wobbly rear end and clumsy turning is the last to fix itself. After giving me instructions to call him any time or day and paying a huge fee, we left to go back to the hotel.

 

We asked the Doc to trim Winston's nails while under because he stopped letting us. This proved to be a problem once we got him back to the hotel and a toe nail started pouring blood. We loaded Winston back into the car and had the nurse cauterize his nail, she also gave me a cauterizing stick in case he started bleeding again. Back at the hotel he did start bleeding again and since I had no idea how to use the stick properly I couldn't get it to stop so we ran over to wal-greens for wrapping so Winston wouldn't bleed all over the hotel room.

 looks pretty pathetic right?

 The spots on Winston's back are the implant spots, but not where the beads are implanted. The skin moved up to his neck when Winston was under, the implants are under the brace. 

Winston slept off the anesthesia while we watched Mirror Mirror and then we drove 20 minutes to another town to eat dinner at the Cracker Barrel. Winston didn't have much of an appetite and John had to hand feed him to get him to eat anything. 

Right now I don't want to say if I've seen improvement yet and jinx it, but he does seem to stand easier and want to walk around more.