This is so scary. I was so happy with how well it has healed on the sides. I am packing it full of antibiotic every day, and the infection seemed to have been gone from most of the wound, or the wound mostly healed. The vet only stapled the sides of the wound, she never shut the whole thing. She cleaned out the dead, infected tissue, and then put a few staples in each side to, I'm guessing, keep the skin a bit closer together so that it would grow together. She was also put on baytril and more metacam, and I put neosporin in the wound daily.
Should I just take off teh cone and let her rip out the rest of the staples? I'm scared she will rip the wound back open, and we will be at square one again, with more staples or stitches or god knows what and another two weeks in the cone. We're going back in for a check up on Friday, by the way.
Edit: JUST saw your post Petunia. You're right, it is hard to question my vet, especially considering that she did such a difficult surgery, and that she has been so generous and helpful with all of my rats. I don't think this is a matter of her not knowing what she is doing, I think it is just a matter of varying methods or practices, and I don't want to get on anybody's bad side here or there.
I can just take Oreo out of the cone and let her do what she wants, let her take out the staples and clean it, and then on Friday tell the vet she somehow figured out a way to keep getting out of it, or got out of it at night or something. But if Oreo makes the wound thirty times worse and the vet wants to put back in more staples, what am I supposed to do? Like I said, she is allergic or something to the stitches, and it got infected, so the staples were only placed on the outer edges of the wound-- the central, biggest, infected part was left open as you can see in the picture, and teh infection is still there. However, it has no smell, is getting better not worse, and some of that yellow may be the neosporin-- it is hard to tell. It is just hard, seeing progress with this and then finding out it isn't the right way to go, or that it shut in my rat's infection and might result in her dying from sepsis.
Petunia, Oreo was doing good last night, minus the tail thing which we will be getting checked out Friday. I'll be home in about an hour to check on her again.