Amazing vet-cases - surgeries, prostheses, unlikely recoveries, rare events

[leashedForLife]

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I just watched an incredible surgery to close the worst cleft-palate i have ever seen in my life, on a 4-MO puppy; his siblings are all 35 to 40#, & he weighs NINE pounds.
The cleft was a wide channel down the center of the oral roof; a narrow margin ran along the arcade of his teeth, & the entire middle was simply missing; his sinus was clearly visible, & he had NO soft-palate tissue.
Dr Jeff undermines the tissue on both sides, & essentially butterflies it to try & cover the wide gap; his wife had to do the sutures, as his hands were too big, & he couldn't see the tissue he was trying to stitch. Sewing up a hole inside a hole, with a very limited field of view, is very awkward.
His wife did a beautiful job, she managed to close it all the way to the soft tissues at the upper throat, so that no food can get up above the new membrane [he had been "sneezing" food out of his nose after every meal - it's a wonder he survived, from 3-DO to 4-MO! ].

He also had a naso-gastric tube installed, & he's staying at the clinic to be fed gruel with a syringe, adding H2O to canned food & making it a thin sludge for feeding. // Once his stitches heal, he can hopefully eat orally.
I hope his stitches hold - it was a huge defect, & not much tissue to work with.
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WOW! - 14-days later, what a difference!
that sad little pup, depressed & lethargic, is eating on his own, madly wriggly, all filled-out, not flat & scrawny, & he's gained THREE POUNDS, in a fortnight. // It's very unlikely that Slash will ever get close to his sibs' sizes, but he's not going to be a 10# midget, either.
He's going home.

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[arealhuman]

Always really nice to hear of a happy result like this

 

[leashedForLife]

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the outcome was quite incredible, @arealhuman -
his whole demeanor changed, from passive & affectionate, to active, mischievous, & boisterous. It was truly a life-changing surgery, not just saving his life, as aspiration or infection would eventually have killed him, but altering everything.
He still has an odd face, dished over the foreface & with the plane of his eyes at an angle - his skull will never be normal - but at least now he can self-feed & swallow safely.

the one thing that surprised me was that Dr Jeff didn't broach neutering him; he was 4-MO when he came in, & almost 5-MO when he left. As Dr Jeff said, "You wouldn't want more of these" [congenitally damaged pups], so why not neuter him?
And please don't tell me he's too young - in a few more weeks, he won't be firing blanks, he'll be fertile, & more than willing to mount an estrous F. // Dr Jeff is a big supporter of S/N for all pets who aren't of breeding quality, or who belong to ppl who don't intend to breed, & frankly lack the knowledge to do it well. He & his staff routinely S/N any healthy pet who weighs 2#, minimum. At 12#, this pup was healthy, healed, & could very safely be neutered.

That pup, damaged tho he is, is ALSO a purebred - with registration papers. God help his progeny, if the young boy who owns him decides he really wants "a pup of his, so when he dies, I have another just like him..."
Too many ppl fail to grasp that the essence of sexual reproduction is that no offspring are ever "just like" one parent, they can be similar or dissimilar, but they will never be clones - & even clones don't reproduce the temperament & behavior of the original, who had shaping experiences, including in utero & post-birth, that their clone can never re-experience.
Clones often don't even resemble the original, as identical DNA can be expressed differently as a fetus develops.

Every animal is a one-off, & we humans, who live so much longer than most of our pets, must learn to say good-bye to that much-loved, special pet, & not try to recreate her or him. Loss is part of life. We, too, will have to say good-bye when we die - to this beautiful, scary, intricate world... & losing our pets is part of the rehearsal for that.
Cloning is cheating, & tho costly, it won't buy us a carbon-copy of our beloved.
Breeding should always be to improve the breed - not to "make another like" the dam or sire. That's not only selfish as an aim, it's self-defeating.

Off my soapbox, now,
- terry

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