Sundance’s Leg

 

Abyrose Eternal Sundance is a sorrel Abyssinian female kitten I bred.  She was a very active kitten.

On Thursday 23rd of August 2007 when she was 5 months old I went to feed her breakfast and found her standing on 3 legs!  I watched her for about 5 minutes and she wasn’t using her back leg at all.  It looked like it was on an angle.  I promptly phoned the vet and took her in.  The vet ‘Camille’ was a locum for my vet who had just gone on maternity leave 4 days before!  Camille was amazed that she was still purring and happy despite the intense pain she must have been in.  She gave her pain medication and said it was either broken or dislocated and she wanted to take her to their other clinic for an x-ray. A few hours later I got a call with the bad news.  It was badly broken and the injury was what they described as “Distal Displaced transverse fracture 1cm above the growth plate causing luxation of the patella”.

You’ll be able to see clearly in the photo on the right the break and patella sitting way off line.

 

The next step was to operate on Friday 24th and to insert two pins to hold it all together.  My vet who was on leave specializes in orthopaedics (typically)!  I asked if they could ask her to come in for her surgery but I was told she couldn’t.

Sundance spent Thursday night at the vet and I took down some comforts of home for her.  She had charmed all the staff with her wonderful personality and didn’t seem fazed at all.

On Friday my husband and I happened to be driving past the clinic when I saw my vets car and so I called in and sure enough she was there in her very pregnant state and had gone in especially to assist with Sundance’s operation :-)  I was so pleased and thankful!

The surgery had gone well and Sundance was now facing 4 weeks cage rest.

Hopefully you can see in the photos of the x-rays below the two pins in her leg

I was able to bring Sundance home on Saturday morning.

We had set up a kitten cage in our lounge to keep her in during her recovery.  Anybody who has had an aby with an injury will know what kind of daunting task was ahead of us to keep her quiet and confined!

The photo below shows her leg when we got her home.  She had stitches along her knee plus a stitch on her hip which you can’t see in the photo. 

Now came the fun part... she refused to be in the cage unless it was over night.  She would cry, stand and do flips etc… so I had no option but to spend the next two weeks walking round carrying Sundance or laying on the couch with her on me!  Thankfully I had no kittens at the time as she was VERY time consuming & I hardly got anything done.

When I got up each morning I got her up and fed her and gave her pain medication & cuddled her for about half an hour, then I put her in a carry cage in front of the TV for an hour while I fed the other cats.

Then I came back to my patient and spent until lunch time with her on me.  She spent maybe 15 mins in the carry cage again before she came out again.  This continued… and in the evenings I got to catch up on a few jobs while my husband had her laying on him.

She was in pain as to be expected and also quite bored.

She and I were forming a VERY close bond throughout this time.

On the 28th she pulled one of her stitches out that had been pulling & was sore.  I took her up to the vet and the nurses thought it would be ok.

On the 31st August I noticed she had swelling from her knee to top of stitches.  The stitches looked good and the swelling was swishy to touch.  It wasn't sore.

I took her to Dave (another vet at the clinic who operated on her also) and he put a needle in and got 3 tubes of serum which was cloudy.  He said it wasn't normal.

Poor girl, she was excellent and didn't complain at all!  She's so brave!

Her temp was 39.2.  Dave was thinking it might be turning into infection in at the operation site.  He gave her another 5 days of clavulox.

Her leg filled up again so back to the vet the next day.  It really hurt taking the serum off that time.  Dave said the serum is from a hemorrhage.  Poor Sundance was beginning to hate going to the vet as it hurt.

On Monday Sept 3rd she was back at the vet having the stitches out and more serum taken off.  Her leg was very painful then and she wasn’t using it at all.

It was a very stressful worrying time and some of the things being mentioned were further surgeries or even amputation if we couldn’t get it under control.

On the 5th Sept Dave called in and took a serum sample and sent it to the lab and also started her on Baytril in addition to her clavulox.  At a check up on Friday 7th she got the all clear and the swelling had stopped!  Results showed an infection as we’d expected.

Thankfully after that the pain wasn’t as bad and it was able to start to heal again after the set back.  She was also able to spend a little more time in the cage and wasn’t quite so demanding.

She had repeat x-rays and it showed it was healing as expected.

Below is a photo of her laying on her daddy on the 15th September.  Looking ever so cute...

On the 23rd October my vet 'Lynne' was back at work and Sundance had more x-rays and her hip pin was removed.  She came through the anaesthetic well and she coped ok.  She was also allowed out of the cage and into a 2.5m square room where she couldn’t jump and hurt herself.  This was a big step.

Here is a photo taken on the 25th October.  You can see two hip stitches from the pin removal and the fur is growing back.

 

Following this she had more repeat x-rays and things were progressing well.  She was still quite lame but because the damage was so bad, she had a lot of tendon and ligament damage too which takes a lot longer than bone to heal.  So it was really a matter of time.

The pin left in the bone ended up turning and embedded itself nicely so it is staying in her leg.

I could keep going on and on but it will turn into too many pages so I’ll skip a bit…

 

On the 11th March 2008 Sundance gave birth to SIX beautiful Abyssinian kittens on her 1st Birthday.

It seemed surreal after all she’d been through.  It turned out Sundance’s nipples were too small and flat and the kittens couldn’t latch on to the nipples so I ended up bottle feeding them day and night. 

On the 11th May Sundance finally managed to attend her 1st show!  She became a Champion and also got placed 4th in the top 10’s twice :-)     I was very proud of my girl.

I am keeping one of her beautiful kittens and plan to try again and let Sundance have another litter.  This time she will be mated at the same time as one of my other girls so hopefully I don’t have to bottle feed.

The funny part is we still to this day have no idea how she broke her leg!

 

I’m so grateful for my vets & the support of family and breeder friends who helped us get to this stage with my beautiful and very special Sundance :-)

 

Jody Robinson-Wildey ~ NZ  www.abyrose.co.nz

 

 

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