Dao before his amputation surgery
Let me introduce our cat, Dao Dao, meaning Mr Bean in Cantonese. He is adopted by us after I spotted him on an advert online, we were lucky to have him in the last 7 years (and now).
Our journey begins around 3 months ago in London, when Dao started limping on his hind right leg. I ignored it because our other cat, Mui had a bit of limping problem and it went away after 3 months, she was checked out by the vet and was cleared. Dao had a bit of cat fights and had ear infection and I was not happy to take him back to the vet again so soon. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away and I was required in the funeral overseas, and my husband insisted bringing him to the vet to make sure he was ok.
At the initial diagnosis, the vet thought he might broke his bone because he can feel there is something in his leg. He suspected probably it was half-way healing and hence it was inflamed. We scheduled for an X-Ray appointment the next morning. X-ray showed he had a tumour and amputation was needed. I was not there because I was at the funeral, and based on a friend’s recommendation, and the hope to save his leg, we managed an appointment with Fitzpatrick referrals. (I’ll talk about Fitzpatrick in a separate post)
We were told to save him, we need to amputate his leg. To make it worse, it was so high up into the leg, and it went into the pelvis as well. We did not have an option for a limb saving surgery that the referral is world-famous for. It was not the easiest decision to make, given that I was 13 hours flight away on the phone listening in the diagnosis, and my grandfather burial the next day. In the end, we made the decision to go ahead with the surgery, but my husband wanted me to be there, so the surgery is scheduled 10 days later. We were told this type of cancer will not spread that quickly, and at least I have some time with Dao before we welcome a tripawds home.
As I am writing this, the rehabilitation journey was long, because we had a few complications. This is just the first post about Dao and his new life as tripawds