Raffi is Home!!! (so so news, keep your fingers crossed!)

July 22, 2004

Raffi's home! We arrived at the clinic at 6pm and the vet was just

pulling the IV. Raffi has a fentalyn patch on his side (for pain)

that will come off Saturday afternoon. He is also on antibiotics to

protect against any infection that could occur. If on Saturday,

after the patch removal, he still has pain we can give him some

ketoprofen left over from his initial accident. With Raffi's very

active nature, the vet feels its best for him to feel some pain so he

will let himself rest. *Not suffer*, but so he will know he isn't

healed up yet.

The surgery was tricky as Raffi's bones are just so incredibly tiny.

The vet got the pin in nicely in the larger bone and re aligned the

smaller bone in his leg by suturing it to some surrounding soft

tissue. Unfortunately, the vet found Raffi's bones at the break site

have been broken down some by inflammation. He pointed this out to

us on the x-rays too. It was frightening to see this. Raffi is

still OK, but that was a complicating factor in the mix.

Raffi is on very, very strict crate rest. We absolutely must keep

him quiet and as still as possible for at least 3 weeks. His leg is

casted again, but the cast doesn't protect against rotation so if we

let him move a whole lot he could rotate the bone on the pin which

would disrupt the healing. Right now he's drowsy from the pain

patch, but after the patch comes off it may be harder to keep him

still but we just have too. We cannot risk any slip ups, the vet was

clear with us about that and on the seriousness of this fracture.

Today's bill was $690.00 This includes the surgery itself (only

$200) and then the anesthetic ($175) , IV fluids, 2 days care in the

vet clinic ($80), antibiotics, x-rays, pain medicine, and taxes.

So, we are thrilled to have our little guy home, but we are quite

worried too and are hoping desperately that this attempt will heal

his leg. At least he is still resting comfortably.

-Rhea(my poor furbaby!) & Raffi (what did they do to me?)

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