5days after his first vet visit at home they were back to redress jacks foreleg and remove all his stitches and staples - this is how he is looking:
So a bit of muscle waste which is to be expected after 16days stuck in a stable and major surgery but generally good condition!
He has been a really good patient so far but he really wasn't keen on allowing the vet to remove the padding from his back and got a bit upset and bargy when she started to peel it off. To be fair it probably wasnt too nice as it was well stuck down! To keep him chilled and everyone safe he was given a small amount of sedative. Once he was in the land of nod the back pad came off pretty easy and I could finally see how his spine looked! There were a lot of staples! The vet counted them up as she took them out and there were 25 in total. They came out nice and easy and the wound looked very neat and seems to be healing well. The vet was very happy with how it looked :) she said the wounds often weep a bit but his looked good and no sign of anything except a little bit of swelling which is totally normal. He will now be left with it open to continue to heal. Other than needing a light rug to make sure it doesn't get rubbed I don't need to do anything with it for now except keep an eye on it for any changes.
First pic is with the staples still in and second when they had just been removed.
So with his back sorted we moved onto his other staples in his chest and elbow. They were healing really well and all the staples came out easily leaving really neat little scars (well 2nich!) which shouldn't be visible once the hair grows back. They are still a bit bumpy at the moment but I'm told they will flatten back out in time.
Next we moved on to trying to take the stitches out of his off hind. They are on the inside right at the top so a pretty difficult area to get to, it took 3 of us to get it done - 1 holding his tail, 1 holding a torch and the vet cutting the sutures. The stitches were all the harder to get out because they were stitched really tightly into the skin! It took a while but we got there. I had been washing where the stitches had burst open twice a day by squirting cooled, boiled salty water in a syringe into the wound. This seems to have done the trick and the vet was happy with how it was healing. She cleaned it up and removed some granulated tissue. It bled a fair bit but she said that's good and shows its all healthy tissue so I just need to keep doing what I'm doing with it until it is all healed.
He doesn't care much for being squirted with the salty water, I can't say I blame him - it must sting like a b***h! So I do hope for his sake it heals soon so I can stop!
Finally we got to his off fore, he had had a full leg bandage applied on their last visit in the hope that it wouldn't slip down like the previous bandage had. Unfortunately it hadn't worked and again the wound had been aggrevated by the dressing and was very gunky but there was also another issue, pressure sores :( poor boy. As the vet pealed off the dressing a big chuck of hair and flesh came away from the back of his knee :( it looks really sore and was weeping a lot too.
So the final few stitches were removed from the top and bottom of the wound above his knee (as the rest had already burst) and it was given a good clean up. As on the previous visit it looked much better once cleaned. The vet decided that due to the sores developing it would be better to leave the wound open. The hope is that with the fresh air getting to it then it should heal a bit quicker too. So it seems to be getting worse instead of better as I've now got 3 wounds to clean up twice a day plus some cream to apply to try to stop proud flesh developing. Jack's going to hate me soon I'm sure!
In theory he shouldn't need anymore vet visits until he has his back re xrayed on the 23/3/15 at the vet hospital but with all the issues with his 2 legs not healing very well the vet is going to come back again in a week to see how he is getting on. With any luck the news will be better by then.
Until his legs are looking better he is still confined to his stable but we are hoping that at some point once the legs are better he can at least have some in hand grazing a couple of times a day.
Looking at him now compared to the day before surgery you can see the difference in the muscle over his back and hind end but it's not as bad as I expected.
Wow, he's doing so well. The wound on his back is so neat and clean. I'm hopeless at seeing muscle wastage and can hardly see any on your compare photos, just a little swelling on the 15 days post one.
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