Fan-Belt Kitty Follow-up, Day 9

I'm way behind on updating the Blog.  Too many long days and late nights.   After 3 weeks,  Alley had mostly  recovered from her ordeal under the hood.  I thought you might find the follow-up interesting.

Day 9 whole cat As you may recall (if you followed the above link), Alley was caught in the fan-belt and the friction crushed and cooked her skin, as well as tearing it.  So, nine days after the initial injury and repair, we find that some of the skin we carefully sewed together has lost its circulation and died. You say you can't see it very well?  Well, it's time for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Day 9 close-up So, time for another attempt at repair.  This time we hope to do better, as everything that was going to die should be dead by now.  There is still contaminated infected tissue, but this time we will sew up living skin instead of questionable skin.  Also, with any luck, the hole won't be so big — the skin that lived will have stuck down to the underlying tissue (we hope).   You can see where things are pulling apart here. The dark stuff is dead skin and the "light stuff " is a hole where things are pulling apart.

Debrided junk Here's the dead stuff I peeled off, and here's the hole I have left.Day 9 open

Things didn't pull apart nearly so much as the first time, and the tissue looks pretty healthy (although still pretty gross and disgusting).

Day 9 bandaged So, we trimmed back to live tissue, put surgical drains in again, and put a nice bandage on.  She's still taking pain medicine and antibiotics.  (To be continued)

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