Our Little Conehead

Poor Celtic. He has definitely had a rough week. After his surgery on Tuesday, I stayed home with him on Wednesday because he was still having a tough time getting around. On Thursday, I left him home alone, but he was subjected to the humiliation of the cone collar, since he's notorious for licking his stitches as soon as no one is looking.

Despite the fact that he was unable to bother his incisions, I had to take him back to the vet on Thursday because the big incision under his arm had swollen up to the size of a small egg. The vet said that he had developed a seroma, which is just a collection of fluid in the space that had previously been filled with his fatty tumor. They gave me antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory, and sent us on our way.

We thought the incision was looking like it was almost healed, even though the swelling was still present. Then last night we sent Celtic and Hope outside for their last potty break, and I noticed a trail of blood all the way down the hall into the kitchen. We called the vet, who suggested wrapping him with an ace bandage for the night and bringing him in this morning. After almost an hour of applying pressure to the wound, we were able to bandage it up and get Celtic down for the night.

This morning, the incision was still not bleeding--that is until Celtic got up and walked down the hall. We bandaged him back up and headed straight to the vet, who basically just told us we'd have to keep him bandaged and as immobile as possible until the bleeding stopped, which would probably be several days. The vet made one attempt to reapply the gauze and ace bandage, which failed miserably when it fell off two minutes later and Celtic bled all over the exam room floor. The vet then got an idea, and brought in the super-duper medical tape--the same stuff that I blogged about after giving blood a few weeks ago! This actually did the trick, and now Celtic is sporting a very fashionable green bandage and is no longer bleeding all over the house. We have to change the gauze and readjust the bandage every once in a while, but hopefully we can keep him immobile long enough for the wound to heal.

The good news is, OxiClean takes blood right out of carpets!