Days 9-12 Post Op What’s Next?

The last four days have been fairly easy.  Everything has pretty much gotten back to normal . . . until Sunday.

Before I left for church on Sunday, I put a t-shirt on Aiden, made sure it was tied so he couldn’t get his muzzle under it to lick on the sutures.  When I got home, he had gotten the t-shirt off his front leg and had worked it down below the sutures and had pulled out 3 stitches.  I’m still trying to figure out HOW he managed to do that.

So today (Tuesday) we are at the oncologist’s office to have the rest of the sutures removed.  The place where he pulled the stitches has opened up and is now infected, so we are looking at antibiotics and probably a return to surgery on Thursday to re-suture the open spot.  It has been a real battle trying to keep him from licking.  I’ve used a collar and a t-shirt, and he can still figure out a way to get to the sutures, and not just with his mouth but with his back leg–to scratch.

So we are going to try a hard Elizabethan collar, bandages, and a harness to cover the area until Thursday–and beyond–until the place heals.

In other news, the autologous vaccine protocol starts today.  This is all new to the staff at the clinic, so we are all going to learn a lot about this protocol over the next month.

I’ll keep you posted.  Merry Christmas to all the Tripawds out there . . . and their families!