Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie . . .

I took Joey and Rocky over to the vet (AVS) this afternoon for a 3 o'clock appointment while Buddy and Lisa were working on straightening up the pasture.  Duke, Arthur and Lizzie were all out in the pasture grazing happily.  Then about 4 or 4:30 Mark called to say that Buddy and Lisa had discovered an "8-inch laceration" in Lizzie's right shoulder!  What!!  Lizzie NEVER had any sort of problem like that.  She has Cushings and leg problems, and sometimes stomach pain, but she has never been physically injured.  When Mark called, I asked him if she was bleeding heavily and he said she wasn't so I figured it was just a scrape, more or less.  So I was thinking it might be okay to just wait until morning for the vet to come out.  But fortunately, Bruce and Bonnie were here and both of them are nurse practitioners.  They went out and looked at her and told Mark that she definitely needed stitches.  So he called me back and I called LSU.  They said they'd have the vet on call get back to us.  When I got home and saw her wound it was VERY obvious that she really did need stitches.  Luckily, Ann Chapman, her regular vet, was the one on call.  She lives out on the other end of town, though, so it took her an hour or so to get down here.  But I was really glad she was the one who would be dealing with it since she's been Lizzie's  doctor for everything so far. 

 

I'll tell you what, that wound looked just awful, but I had no idea when I looked at it then just how deep it actually was. 

 

When Ann got here she shaved all around it to begin with, of course.

 

It had looked bad to me as soon as I saw it  . . .



 



 

Ann spent a good half hour rinsing the wound out with pressurized diluted Betadine.   I had no idea how deep that wound was until Ann lifted the sides to rinse everything out in there.  Whew!  Lizzie is a heavy girl and that cut went clear through the fat in her shoulder all the way down to her muscle.  Luckily, although the muscles were visible, they were not cut.

Once she got it rinsed out as well as possible -- and it was very deep and complicated so it wasn't possible to get it completely sterile --  anyway, once she finished with that, she layed a long piece of sterile rubber tubing in there before closing it up.   In fact, oddly enough, she made two additional small incisions off to the sides of the actual cut for the tubing to go in and out.   I guess that's so the actual cut will be able to heal more freely.

Then there were two layers of stitches - one inside that will dissolve themselves, and another closing the skin on top that will need to be removed in two weeks or so.

 

 

Then once she got the stitches done, Lizzie got two kinds of antibiotic injections and a tetanus shot and Ann showed me how to flush out the cut.  It's not all that straightforward -- you have to inject the Betadine and then push on the skin around the wound to push the stuff back out.   It doesn't just RUN out as you would expect.  In fact, Ann said she might well develop what they call "skin bubble wrap" where air bubbles spread all along her back under her skin.  Anyway, we need to flush the wound multiple times twice a day, and give her antibiotics and pain meds and keep her in her paddock.  I'm also washing her fly sheets tonight to be sure they're completely clean, then I'm going to put those on her to keep bugs out of that wound.  It's going to be some LONG days . . .  but she IS going to be okay.  In fact, by the time Ann left tonight (and it was almost quarter to nine by then!), she was busily scarfing down her dinner.

 

 

(That wood at the bottom of her stall is unpainted because it's going to be covered with that vinyl stall liner - eventually.)

 

So for now, she's closed in her stall -- it's going to storm tonight big time and she's not allowed out in the rain so grunge can run down on her incision.  Oh, and we also have to go get some vaseline that we need to keep on her skin below her wound, otherwise the drainage will make her skin raw.

 

Well, it's really really late at this point and it's already begun to rain.  So I'm going to go check on Lizzie, then go to bed!  It's going to be another looong day tomorrow.