Jack had his first home visit from the vet yesterday, 10 days post op and 5 days since leaving vet hospital.
My own vet came to change the dressing on his knee and check all his other incision sites were healing ok.
I had not yet seen the mess he had made of his leg where he had a melanoma removed during the surgery. As he came round and tried to get to his feet he burst open the stitches so they decided to heavily bandage it instead of trying to re stitch it as there was little skin left to pull together.
He had 5 melanoma's removed in total but the only one that had caused any issue was the one on his knee on his off fore.
I was interested to see what was going on and took some pictures at the bandages came off.
As you can see from the image below it didn't look great
There was quite a lot of discharge and I was immediately worried but the vet cleaned it up and was actually pretty happy with how it is healing. The discharge was due to some of the bandage having slipped down and irritating the wound. Once she had given it a good clean with saline, which Jack didn't mind at all and stood like an angel bless him (he even tried to help by licking his leg!), it looked much better and she said the skin underneath was healing well and all looked healthy with no infection.
There was also some breaking down of the wound on his hind leg where 2 melanoma's had been removed. Unfortunately the leg straps on jacks rug had irritated this area and it also needed some cleaning up but again the vet was happy with how it looked once she had cleaned it up and said it was healing well and wasn't infected.
She didn't want to take the pad off of his back until the staples come out next week but I showed her where it was coming up at the front. She didn't have anything that would stick it back down so sent me off to the chemist to try to get some wound glue to stick it back down until her next visit.
She was very impressed with how Jack was coping with his confinement and wasn't worried by anything, she thinks he is doing very well and commented how well he looks still :)
This is him on 1/2/15 the day before surgery
And this is how he looked when the vet came last night
As you can see not too much muscle loss so far :)
He had his last bute sachet that night and is now only on another 5 days of antibiotics (hopefully!) and no more pain relief. He is still eating his meds with no problems - what a good patient!
He has been far happier the last few days with some company 24/7 and we are now settling into a good routine with everything.
Next vet visit is on the 17th when he will have all his stitches and staples removed and his leg bandage changed again. Unfortunately the vet doesn't think it will be ready to leave open by then so a further visit or 2 will be needed. His leg is more trouble than the major surgery on his spine!
After the leg has fully healed hopefully we can at least start some in hand walking (with the help of a little sedalin!)
We return to vet hospital on the 23rd March where he will be xrayed and then fingers toes and anything else possible to be crossed will be that he can go out and we can get started on his rehab.
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