Compunction Junction

The Struggle of the Donger: The Epic

My dog: Dong Soon.... the Donger.  Quite an animal.  In her prime, she was sharp as a razor, fun, energetic, had bounce to spare.  This dog would NOT stop running, digging, chewing, smelling.  With the exception of a formidible will she is pretty much the perfect dog.

In late September of 2005, my wife Kim was taking her out for a walk in the neighbourhood park.  He had done it before and she would always heel or stay close: She hadn't really ever been too tempted to disobey.

Needless to say, we found out the hard way that children with balls are simply too tempting for her.  I was sitting in my apartment a full three hundred meters away and I heard her howl when her leg got ran over.  It was a "big sound".  The children across the street got scared and the people UP the street at the bus stop looked really worried.

I ran out (knewing something bad happenned).  We took her straight to the only vet we knew of in our city.  Yangsan (where we were living at the time) is a large town and we found out later that there are a lot of more competent, vets in the town.

We took her to the only vet we knew of and we were told by a young man posing as a doctor that her leg was broken and that she would require surgery. 

"Well that's too bad", we thought.  It wasn't too expensive in the end; around 300,000W (340$CAN) which was pretty reasonable.  They showed us the xray and everything looked fine to us.  So, she stayed to have her operation, and we went on our not so merry way. 

We did our best to keep the poor donger off her feet over the next few weeks.  Taking her to the bathroom the first few days ended up being very difficult and scary for her.  I'm not sure if it was painful or if she just didn't like being held while she peed but she made a bit fuss over it.

After a few weeks,  the doctor had removed the pin he had "put" in her leg without telling us.  It wasn't any real problem until she rebroke her leg when she was moving to fast for us at one point. 

But the tough little ***** didn't make a sound for about half an hour.  Then suddenly, out of the blue, she started yelping and yelping.  We got a lot of terrible looks and we felt rancid, feeling certain she rebroke it.

Back to the vet.  And yes, it was rebroken.  They would need to perform the surgery again.  However, this time we would only pay half as the vet had admitted to taking the pin out much too early.  When we went to go pick her up later in the day, we were told that the doctors had actually killed her. 

Apparently, they had given her too much anaethetic since they forgot to ask whether she had eaten (something no other vet has said was necessary to know).  She was dead for three minutes and then they realized it.  And shocked her back to life.  So that was ****** up.

She had the pin in her leg for 3 months after that.  By the time early january came around, they thought, "Well, we should take another look at an x-ray".  Surprisingly enough, SOME healing had taken place but "inexplicably", very little.  And when a layperson, such as myself, would look at the xrays, the bones looked like jackstraws.  But I thought i'd still give them the benefit of the doubt.  My wife was a little more distrustful but I convinced her that it'd be ok.

And then, come mid March at the end of a routine check up and x-ray inspection, the crazy shyster of a doctor says "It looks like we may have to amputate".  Needless to say, I took the Donger AWAY from that vet. 

And for the first time it really hits me....REALLY hits me "This guys had absolutely no idea what he was doing".  It was primarily a livestock clinic but they DID do small animal operations.  I just assumed they could do them competently.  I was wrong.

We have sinced moved to Busan: The planet of a city to which Yangsan acts as a satelite.  We took her to another vet who sent us to a very inspiring vet on the other side of town.  Nice guy and pimped out, equipment wise.  And FINALLY an xray machine that didn't look like it was pulled out of the Chernobyl medical room.  It took a beautiful xray of her pin that left them absolutely (and literally) flabergasted. 

They just looked at it and shook their heads.  The two vets looked quite exasperated.  When we questioned them they told us the following bits of info.

1) Our Yangsan vet had literally slipped a pin under Donger's skin and that was it.  Just a pin... not attached to ANYTHING.  Not screwed.  Basically, it was like having a pin splint outside your leg except more painful if it moved.  And to top it, the x-ray that our NEW vet was looking at (taken only 1.5 weeks after the Yangsan vet's last shots) showed the bones still in the same place.  That place was: Fucked Up.  Capitalized for purpose.

2) Our Yangsan vet had not really taken the time to insert the pin properly not seemed to care enough about its placement to attempt to move it.  We had heard them murmur over the placement of the pin but at no point did they mention that it was misplaced (They had an assistant who spoke enough English that we could understand the gyst of what was going on). 

The new vet had said that the pin they had inserted in her leg was TOO LONG.  That's right... that is exactly how bush league these Yangsan vets turned out to be. 

The pin extended past her "elbow" joint, all the way over her "wrist" joint.  And since it would hurt her too much to move EITHER of these joints, she wouldn't move them. 

Of course, any old person will tell you that if you don't work your body enough, if you don't flex your muscles throughout your life, move your bones etc, you find that, when you're older your bones become brittle.  In other words, excercise keeps your bones strong.

And poor Donger, not being able to move either of these joints, has developed arthritis in both her joints as well as having weak (porous bones).  You can feel it when you move her paw especially: It is very very stiff.

Since visiting her new vet, she has had her operation.  And boy oh boy, if this new vet did the operation according to procedure, no wonder the Yangsan vet can blow me.

They have wrapped a metal plate around the break.  They attached the plate on BOTH sides of the crack, to either bone (with three screws in each bone).  In addition to that, the plates are held in place by 4 sets of pins that are bent in such a way as to provide more ridigity.  So basically, she looks bionic. 

But dang, it sure inspires confidence. 

These days, we still take her once a week to the vet for check ups and we now put iodine on the surgical wound at home.  She is relaxed and kinda dopey.  She's a dog that really needs to run around to be happy and she still can't do that.  Kim and I are struggling to keep her in her cage all day (it's tough knowing she's locked in their when she probably wouldn't walk around our apartment too much).  Playing with her entails a lot of chewing games and rolling things at her. 

I'm taking her to the vet today and i hope that her break will be doing better.

We're on week 3 of an 8 week heal.  I'll put up some pictures of the Donger as soon as I get to our home computer.

Remember happy time