Stitches Are Out, But ...

We're please that Turk seems to be making progress with his internal healing. Temps are normal, he wants to be more active than the Doctor wants him to be, and he's now sleeping occasionally on the side with the incision and missing ribs. All good news.

We were supposed to get the stitches out of the incision from his second surgery on Tuesday but ended up taking him back to the Vet on Sunday when his incision started to weep and open within a day of coming off antibiotics. That vet said to leave the stitches in for another week and put him onto a new course of a different antibiotic, but the center of the incision continued to deteriorate. She also recommended onesies to try to keep a bandage in place.

Yesterday we went back to the hospital where they have reevaluated his incision. They decided that there is subcutaneous infection below the area in the center of his incision that has reopened and they've scheduled him to meet with the thoracic specialist tomorrow just in case the infection is coming from the chest cavity. Meanwhile, they have removed all of the stitches from his second surgery.

Given the issues we've experienced with his healing, we're not willing to leave town until all the stitches are out and the incision is healed. Originally, we expected to leave on tomorrow which then slipped to the 9th which could become the 19th or so depending on what they do with him tomorrow. Slow going, but we did get some salmon smoked last night.