"Young girl, they call them the diamond dogs..." - Diamond Dogs, David Bowie

I got up at 6:30 AM, got dressed, got Maxwell got packed up and we headed out for the specialist's office. Maxwell had the undermined edges of the ulcer abraded -- basically they do a keratectomy where they take a flat grinder and rough up the edge of the wound on the cornea to allow the new cells to adhere better during the healing process. Can you believe that they did this without general anesthesia? The nurse said that he was such a good boy and just stood there very still for her -- I told her to just tell him what they were doing, why and why he needed to stand still; apparently it worked for her. (He's generally a very good boy for procedures, a few summers ago he received stitches in his foot while hanging around in the vet's office)

Anyway, we are back home 170 miles and 4.5 hours later from our road trip with a little bag of eye drops, ointments and a long, long list of after care instructions. He's going to be fine, and I am crossing all my crossables that he is 99% healed by the time I return home to pick him up at the vet's office next week.

Thank you for all the prayers and good wishes.