Hey everyone, it’s Ryan again.  I just wanted to give everyone a quick update because we’ve had an interesting week.  It started on Monday with the amputation being done without any complications and Eddie was able to come home that same night.  Tuesday, Eddie was doing as expected, he lounged around most of the day and seemed to be sore, but we expected that from the beginning because, let’s face it, it was a big event and procedure.  I had to work my shift (24 hours) on Wednesday, but Sarah did tell me that she noticed some swelling around the surgical site and extending to his underside, but again, this was something that was expected.

And then I came home Thursday morning to find what appeared to be blood all over Eddie’s bedding, the carpet, wood floors and so on.  I took a look at Eddie’s site and found the swelling that Sarah told me about.  I also noticed some drainage coming from the site, but to me, it didn’t look like much.  I monitored Eddie for the day and when Sarah got home from work, we decided that he needed to be seen as soon as possible.  Because the DVM that did the amputation is closed on Thursdays (he teaches at the local Military college) we ended up going to the local emergency vet clinic.  The emergency clinic gave Eddie a thorough check and decided that the surgical site was infected.  The clinic gave us some antibiotics and gave us the option of either having the site opened, drained and re-stitched at their facility on Thursday night or, at the suggestion of the clinic vet, go see the vet that did the amputation as soon as possible and have him decide on a course of action.  We decided to return to the original vet and have him take a look.

Fortunately, Sarah was able to take Eddie to be seen this morning and the vet was very positive.  He said that he had given Eddie a long acting antibiotic at the time of the surgery which should last about 7 days, which will be Monday.  He looked the site over and said that, even though the site is draining, everything looks OK (because the stitches are intact, there’s no gapping at the incision and a couple other reasons).  He told us that the extra antibiotics would help and to keep giving them as prescribed and to keep an eye on the site.  He said to come back if we noticed any gapping at the incision or if the stitches get damaged, come back, but other than that, come back as originally scheduled.

Thanks again for keeping track of our story and we’ll keep everyone updated on Eddie’s status and condition.