Day 41: Necrotic Tissue

               Today (as normal) we had Technician appointments and Doctor appointments throughout the day.  In the morning, we had a Chocolate Lab named Charlie that had necrotic tissue all over his chest.  His owner had brought him in on Saturday as an emergency, but the doctors were so booked with appointments and other emergencies (life-threatening ones, like bloat/twist); so, since this wasn’t life-threatening, Dr. Todd wrapped the wound and asked the owner to make an appointment for some time this week (which he did for today).  The wound was... pretty gross; as Dr. Todd had said, it covered the middle area of his chest and was bloody, pus-filled, and made up of lots of cysts, dead skin, and bruising.  Talking to some of the other doctors and looking at his chart, Dr. Todd surprisingly found out this is a reoccurring medical issue on Charlie; Dr. Kris had removed something similar to this on his chest three years ago, and Dr. Mark had removed something similar a year or two ago.  They don’t know what causes it, nor how make it stop reoccurring; the best they can do is remove the area and hope it doesn’t come back.  Dr. Todd took Charlie into surgery and removed the area; and after the surgery, Charlie seems to be doing fine, and doesn’t seem to feel as uncomfortable/strange in his chest area as he did before.

Charlie waiting for his surgery, with his bandages on from Saturday.

The wound-area on Charlie's chest.  As I said, it was pretty strange-looking and kind of gross.

Beginning to remove the area.

Finishing the skin-deep incision.

Tearing/cutting through a fat layer in order to seperate the infected area from the rest of the body.

The infected area once removed.

The large area that was taken off (it looks a lot bigger than the area taken off, but remember: skin stretches, so the area taken off looks small while this area looks large).

Begining to stitch up multiple fat and skin layers in order to make the skin opening closer together.

As it can be seen, with continued stitching of layers, the area is getting smaller...

...and smaller. (We had a huge rush of appointments around the end of this surgery, so I was unable to get a picture of the finalized stitching because I was needed to help the Doctors and Technicians.)