Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The pitiable "Cone of Shame"

Continuing the SAT study month theme (I seem to be stuck in the p's):
Pitiable
Deserving or inciting pity; "a hapless victim"; Lily is pitiable in her post surgery state.

Have you ever seen the Disney film "Up"?
If not, you must see it. It is a cartoon, a really great cartoon. We watched it last year as a family. The first cartoon we had watched as a family since the boys were little. It's a masterpiece of the animated variety.

Anyway, Lily the golden retriever loved it. Although she was a little scared, okay a lot scared, of the pack of dogs when they were being mean. She LOVED Doug the golden retriever... "squirrel".

Here is a picture of Doug with his "Cone of Shame"


Here is a picture of Lily in her "Cone of Shame"


She is very pitiable. So Lily's story goes like this...
She had a couple of nasty bumps. One was on her back, right where people like to pet her. She has had it for about a year and a half. We had it tested a while back and although it was benign (also known as a sebaceous cyst), it was growing.

Then she got a bump on her neck, right where people like to pet her (running theme). She had that one for about a year and it stayed about the size of a pea, until a couple months ago when it started growing.

Well, the bumps seemed to be bothering everyone (except for Lily). So we decided to have them removed. They turned out to be deeper than the doctor had first anticipated, leaving Lily with rather large post surgery wounds. Lily first came home without the cone of shame and instead was wearing a fashionable t-shirt, but she would not stop scratching at the neck wound (it looks pretty ugly so I will spare everyone the photos).

Here is the wound on her back:


Anyway, she has been wearing the Cone of Shame for about a week now. She still bumps into everything with it. She has taken to scraping the skin off my legs with it (okay, yeah, I realize long pants would solve that problem). She jumps on the bed and rests her Cone of Shame on my lap and stares at me really pathetic like. She has been without doggie daycare and without a bath for 14 days. Tomorrow she gets her stitches out. I think we are all hoping to be rid of the Cone of Shame.

And in case anyone is wondering whether the surgery was absolutely necessary, the answer is no. And I would not do it again. Even if the bumps grow and burst (which can happen), we will just let that happen and deal with it. This surgery stuff is for the birds.

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