Here's Alley back for another check-up, 36 days after getting caught in the fan-belt. She looks pretty good overall, though she hasn't grown her hair back, obviously.
You may recall when we started this case that I noted it's hard to tell whether traumatized skin will survive or not. An area can look pretty decent, yet have its circulation irreparably damaged. Days later, it becomes apparent that you are going to lose it. That's what we saw at day 9.
There were a couple of other areas that developed a hard crust, but didn't slough off at that time. There was a spot on the outside of her right thigh, and her remaining tail had a pretty large area, as well. When I've seen these in the past, the crust has eventually sloughed, leaving a new, pink skin underneath (rather than the yucky giant hole that we saw on day 9).
That's what the patch on the side of the thigh did, but the tail was a different story. Alley's owner hadn't really noticed a problem, but on the way to the clinic, the tip of the tail came off. Well, the skin on the tip of the tail, anyway. The remaining tail has pink skin on it, but the tip does look a little raw. It remains to be seen how this will finally heal, and whether it will grow hair or not. Scar tissue has no hair follicles, so we might be up for one more surgery to get the tail into a nice non-painful (and more cosmetically appealing) situation.
This has got to be one of the funkiest things I have ever seen. I think that eventually this will just be a bad memory for Alley as she goes into her new, more sheltered, and bob-tailed life.
That's such a great job you did fixing up her wounds (and a great job she did not messing anything up too much while it healed). And I totally agree about that sloughed off bit on her tail, but while you say 'funky' looking, I'm thinking more like "euww-yuck."
Posted by: KateH | October 25, 2009 at 09:15 PM
Poor kitty. She's all the more beautiful because of her survival.
Posted by: Janet | November 06, 2009 at 07:21 AM