Amy’s Gripping Commentary

As described earlier, Clover had a big cleanup of his huge abscess at the vet on Monday. I don’t know WHY he’s doing so well, but he’s (mostly) eating and seems to be pretty comfortable. He and Arliss came home yesterday. He’s on penicillin injections and I need to clean the belly area daily, but otherwise we just wait and see and let him heal. It seems like he should be in shock or dead to look at this, but the vet (and let me give a shout out here to her, Angela Lennox of Avian and Exotic Animal Clinic in NW Indy) says the nerve endings at the periphery died off when the tissue necrotized, so he doesn’t seem to notice all this drama. He is messing with the drain a little bit (the tubing that holds open the hole near his elbow) but we’ll be removing that soon.

Barring more pus forming, we can either let all this granulate in over the next several weeks, or go in after a week or so to surgically help it along with the loose skin he has after losing some weight. It’s likely to need surgical help to encourage it to heal anyway where the edges are not well connected. For now, let’s hope he continues to feel good and eat well and be a good patient.

He’s not even on pain meds right now! But he’s been squinting his eyes a bit, so I think I’m going to put him back on an NSAID for discomfort.

This is how it looked yesterday when I picked him up at the vet:

In a previous post I showed Clover bunny’s belly with a large painful bruise appearance that went necrotic. He’s also been limping on one front leg. He started eating again last Thursday (he’s been on meds and syringe feeding for awhile now) and as of this weekend was feeling himself again, even running to greet me when I came in the room, although his front left elbow swelled up to golf ball size. And while he lost a lot of weight, he needed to lose weight after pigging out on his pal Arliss’ food the last several months, so he’s actually back to an appropriate size for a mini-rex (I used to call him maxi-rex).

He’s been back to the vet several times and I was happy that the edges of the bizarre wound were finally defined–no more dying tissue, which left us with an area we could treat or work with. One plan was to surgically remove the large dead area and stitch the skin closed, and due to losing a sixth of his weight since May, he needed a bit of a tummy tuck anyway so there was extra skin to work with. Others suggested letting it be a ‘natural bandage’ and have it heal on its own.

Several rabbit experts and vets have seen the pictures over the past couple of weeks and possible causes were posited as a burn, squeezing too hard during recent bladder expression, pooling/contaminated sub-q fluids that killed the vascular supply to the area, or a traumatic injury like being kicked. None of these seemed to fit well and some were basically impossible.

This is how it looked Sunday morning, which is gross but an improvement since it seemed to have stopped getting worse and he felt so much better. The mess at his mouth is because he needs a napkin when I give him meds and food!

But today he saw the vet and we found out what it was… a giant abscess. Squeezing on the ‘swollen’ elbow causes pus to come out his belly area. It’s a big awful mess and now he has a giant open area on the belly which can’t really be stitched shut because of how extensive the abscess is. Nor can it all be excised because it’s so large. He has a drain in it but he’s likely to chew it out.

Clover needs lots of good wishes. The aftercare is going to be hard and the prognosis is difficult for any abscess that can’t be adequately removed and flushed. He also did poorly with anesthesia and had a really traumatic day on top of this horrible injury.

Ms. Arliss will tell him to buck up, I’m sure.

Updated picture 06 Oct 11: have been back to the vet a couple times. Still up in the air about surgery but as it opens I am finding it harder to feel like I’m helping him (and experiencing a weak stomach too). He’s not eating anything but greens so several times a day I am syringing food and several medicines. I worry about hurting him, though at least he’s getting around better now. I wish he would eat.

Also last night my little piggy buddy Frisco died. He’s been sick a long time but had a lot of good days. He passed relatively peacefully on a day when he woke up squeaky and enjoyed his greens.

I think this might be the first time in twenty years I didn’t have a guinea pig.
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02 Oct 11

Poor Clover (Arliss’ buddy) was in the hospital two weeks ago for bladder sludge (minerals in the urine that accumulate as crystals and cause him to “pee sand”) and then last week went in for this horrible bruise thing on his belly that has turned into dead tissue. I’m mostly posting it so I can link to it from another bunny list to get some opinions, but please keep him in your thoughts because it looks like he’ll need surgery this week to excise the necrotic portion. Also he is barely eating, poor little guy.

David send me this picture he took today.

Of COURSE she has to put her butt on my pillow.

I had an adventure today at work which involved a muscle spasm in my back while at my desk, which was going to be a simple trip with a coworker to health services, but someone heard “back injury” and called the emergency number, and pretty soon I had lights and sirens and a trip in the company ambulance. SIGH. More embarrassing than anything! I am fine and back at work after they treated with heat, muscle relaxer, and ibuprofen. (I’m also very grateful to have medical services available right here at work! Talk about efficient and cost effective for the employees–and it gets us back to work faster too. Good for everyone.)

I’m pretty sure when Gatorade is on my grocery list, I won’t remember to look for the “isotonics” aisle.

Today is Grandma’s birthday! We had a party last weekend with lots of good food and laughs. It’s a good thing she can take a joke since there were more than a few Oldie von Moldy statements directed her way.

The dogs said to tell you happy birthday, too, Grandma

Last year I told a few stories about spending time with Grandma. And she wasn’t too happy this past weekend when she noticed I cut my hair.

Hope you have a great day and eat lots of cake!

I wanted a mouse to take to meetings at work, but I didn’t want a black one that could be confused with everyone else’s mouse. So I bought a pink one.

Not long after I started using this mouse I looked closely at the design. It looks like a pole dancer! It’s definitely some dancing woman with quite the body and long designer arms that remind me of Barrel of Monkeys monkey arms. Soon other people came to know my mouse as the Naked Lady Mouse.

It was obscure enought that I continued to use it, but I just didn’t understand the design the manufacturer chose. Then last week I rode my bike to work and when I arrived, the Naked Lady Mouse didn’t work. The little receiver had cracked during my travels. Fortunately my laptop always does well on this trip! I put it in a foam sleeve but I guess that wasn’t enough for the mouse receiver.

To round out the story, when I came out to my bike that afternoon, I found a friend had decorated it with a joke magnet that had previously gone undetected on her car for weeks. But everyone at work saw it on my bike right when they went in the door!

I bought a new mouse. It’s the same model, but it’s BLUE. No design.

I’m really going to miss her
A tomato ate my sister

I stopped drinking milk years ago, but “From the titties to the cities” still sounds pretty gross.

Mom look: a Huffy Sea Pines bike!

Matt just finished his triathlon here in Indy. I rode my bike downtown to watch with Dad and Andrea.