OK everyone I have to report on the sickest thing. Sorry.
Melonie's hemotoma shrank after her initial hospital stay, but the skin was necrotic so she had another operation last week. She was terrified to be at the vet's alone but we made her really comfortable in the big hospital cage and gave her a/d. So she was comforted. I didn't know when I was taking her in that she would be operated on, actually.
She came home with Frankenstein stitches as he removed the dead skin, a small tumour beginning again, and an abscess.
She is terribly thin so my big concern has been feeding her and getting medication into her. But the would was not healing, and getting stinkier and a tumour appeared on her arm at the end of the opening.
Yesterday she had little appetite, it was the sickest smell in the world, and she has always protested the hydrotherapy. Well, guess what I found while cleaning her wound?
Maggots. It is the single most disgusting thing I have had to do to help a rat, but using a q-tip and tweezers, I believe I removed every last maggot from that wound, even the ones who'd gone deeper into her wound than I would like to think about. It was soooo gross.
If there was a puke icon, I'd use it. Thankfully my stomach is pretty strong.
I disinfected that wound, which is now a mess and not a Frankenstein row of stitches, three times with tea tree solution and Hibitane and polysporin (the one with lanacaine in it) and put her to bed with twice the dose of Metacam.
She hated it but I think she recognized, as my work was nearing completion, that I was noticably helping her.
This morning the stink was greatly reduced, her appetite was greatly increased, and the wound is much cleaner even if not pretty. I've swabbed it twice with Betadine and will continue to do so.
Now I have to talk to my vet about how to bandage her to keep any more flies from getting at her, and see what her prognosis might be.
