Hello! Its been one whole week since Wickets surgery and she is doing very well!! She had her first official post-op exam today and her doctor is very pleased with her progress!! Being a typical worried mommy, I was concerned things may not look good. I was a veterinary technician for many years and can assess a situation fairly accurately. Turns out Im only skilled at this when its not my pet. When its your own baby...well, you know. Emotions cloud judgement. Wanting everything to be successful keeps us (ok, me) extra watchful of every detail and change that happens. I should probably spend a little more time looking at other things besides a cat butt and monitoring stool consistency. To give you a visual, I would compare my level of bum attention to an anxious, wide-eyed coffee addict on a binge most of the day. I fear Im making Wicket bum-conscious. I can see her on a couch now, I grew up with an over-bearing mother who stared at my backside all day. Now I dont want ANYONE look at it! So her doctor says the sutures around her rectum have loosened up in the past week, but apparently that is expected. For the first 3-4 days the tissue was so swollen that she was struggling to pass stool. It didnt help that her stool wasnt loosening despite the many laxatives she started! Fast forward to day 4-5 and she was defecating very often and having stool loose enough to pass easily. Weve never been so excited about poop in our life! As always, she eats, drinks, and plays (in spite of us confining her). She talks A LOT, which I believe is a act of defiance and protest of her limited activity and decreased social life. Who knew such a tiny voice box could project such a loud scream!? The current plan is to leave the purse-string suture in as long as we can to train her colorectal area to stay inside her body. Im not sure I explained the surgery before, so Ill clarify. Typically when a rectum prolapses, they fix it with a purse-string suture that encircles the anus and provides tissue support until the rectal swelling goes down. In about 5-7 days, the suture is removed and all is well. In Wickets case, the sphincter muscle of the anus was sheared off by the lawnmower. Amazingly, she still had bowel control, but she couldnt live with her colon hanging out of her body. The complication was how to keep her rectum in without the actual anal muscle present? We planned to corral the tissue back into her body, enclose it with the traditional purse-string suture, and see if her body will scar in around the tissue. The hope is that the scarring will act as a substitute for the missing sphincter muscle and hold the tissue inside her body. A week later, things are holding up well. There is a small amount of rectal tissue that is bulging around the suture, but it is holding. Rather than take the suture out, we are going to leave it in as long as we can. The suture will dissolve, but should hold a couple more weeks. The longer it stays in, the longer her body can work on scarring in the tissue. We have decided that if at the time of suture removal the tissue stays in but is still bulging a bit, we will place another purse-string to give her body more time to scar in the tissue. Overall, Wicket is great! She gained 1/2 pound in the past week and now weighs 4 pounds! She will be visiting her doctor again once a week for the next couple weeks to keep up on her sutures. We are very excited and encouraged about her progress so far and looking forward to next weeks appointment. Above all, Wicket thanks you VERY much for the help you have provided for her healing to progress! I attached an illustration of a purse-string suture to provide a visual of the description. I also attached a sweet picture Wicket sleeping after her appointment today. She was worn out!!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 22:28:02 +0000
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