Day 22: Pancreatitis and an Abscess

               Today there weren’t many patients or appointments at all.  We had a Chihuahua named Hugo, a Domestic Short-Haired named Penelope, and Diego is still (of course) receiving medical attention and staying at the hospital.  Hugo has Pancreatitis (explanation of Pancreatitis in Day 20), and he was receiving Cerenia (to help stop the vomiting), Buprenorphine (to help veil the pain), and Flagyl (to help get her digestive system on track).  When it was time to give him his dosage of Cerenia, Nancy allowed me to give it to him while she help him for me.  Cerenia burns when it is injected, so the person giving it has to have someone carefully hold the dog or cat for them as they’re injecting the medication because the animal can try to either bite, claw, or try to get away.  I tried to inject the medicine slowly so the burn would be a less painful burn spread out over a few seconds, rather than injecting it fast and having Hugo feel a major burn at once.  He didn’t do anything besides whimper slightly, so hopefully injecting it slowly worked okay and made it less painful for him.  Penelope had come in a week ago from this past Sunday for getting bitten on her tail.  The owners thought she got bitten around two weeks ago when she was outside roaming around, but they didn’t bring her in.    I don’t understand why they didn’t, because she has a pretty large wound/bite mark on her tail.  She came back today because the wound developed an abscess, which ruptured and hurt her tail even more.  Dr. Lou took a look at it and flushed it with some saline solution before spraying Granulex-V (to help remove dead cells and scabbing) and Vetericyn-VF (to help heal the wound [full explanation in Day 21]) on it.  She then bandaged the area, gave Penelope some sub-q fluids, and sent her home to give the wound some time to heal up before seeing her again.  Diego is doing a lot better today than he was yesterday; he still isn’t really able to move on his own and his head is still twitching a bit, but he’s able to lift his head up on his own now and move his ears, and eating isn't quite as much of a strain as it was for him yesterday.  Such a good sign! I’m looking forward to seeing him tomorrow to see how even better he’s become.

Hugo the Chihuahua.

Penelope, the Domestic Short-Haired.

The wound on Penelope's tail.

Granulex-V working it's magic on the wound.

Vetericyn-VF working it's magic on the wound.