Open incision? I need opinions!

[PamperB]

So Pamper was spayed exactly a week ago and as I was checking on her incision, I noticed that she had two places which looked very very red. I slightly placed some cotton over it to see if there was any blood but there wasn’t (at least not on the cotton ball). Below is a pic. You can’t really tell from this one but the bottom part has a small yellow “ball” on it which is pus.

She is otherwise doing normal life, pooping, eating and everything else as usual. She is even flopping, which is surprising. She seems like she is in no pain at all.

I am taking her on Friday to the vet since it’s impossible for me to go tomorrow. Is there anything I can do in the meantime to prevent it from getting (more) infected? Can I clean the incision with alcohol or anything? Did the skin part open or lick the glue off? Because I never saw any stitches, and the vet told me that they would be done so that she couldn’t pull them out.

[JackRabbit]

Can you email that pic to the vet?

[LBJ10]

It doesn’t appear to have actually opened. I think what you’re seeing is some infection. You could use some chlorhexidine solution to clean it in the meantime. Regular Neosporin (no painkiller kind) is safe to use, but I don’t know how deep the wound is. You’re not supposed to use it in deep wounds. I like JR’s idea of emailing the pic to the vet. They could tell you if it would be safe to do that or not.

[PamperB]

I sent it but she hasn’t read it yet.
I live in Argentina and it’s hard to find what you recommend, however I’ve been reading and some people use a cream used to treat babies’ diaper rash. It contains vitamin A, boric acid (antiseptic and antimicotic), lanolin, bencetonium, vaseline, etc etc. What do you think?

[PamperB]

Oh and today the blood spot looks brownish, like when it dries.

[HappyHollandDays]

Keeping any wound clean is too priority, sometimes that means leaving them alone. that is what I would advise here. Immune systems are fantastic at fighting infections, and the risk of using at home medication not made for rabbits seems too great. I would say leave it for the day. You’re seeing a vet tomorrow, and any progress you make might only be topical and could hide the infection from the vet and then they prescribe less strong medication, and then a snowball effect. In the meantime you can make sure she doesn’t get the incision excessively dirty ie: change her litter, make sure she’s not incessantly licking at it, normal things in the after care of any surgery. Good luck to you and your bun!!!

[PamperB]

Okay, here’s the update just in case anyone has a similar issue.

The vet looked at the open part and said that it was open but not too open. That it was already starting to heal and dry up and she preferred not to stitch it back up again because this might stress her too much. She said it didn’t look infected. Instead she applied neural therapy around the wound and said it would heal in the next few days.

I just nodded when she said neural therapy because I had no idea what it was but then I looked it up and I thought I’d share this new info:
Neural therapy is a method of diagnosing and treating illness and pain caused by disturbances of the body’s electrophysiology. These electrical disturbances, called “interference fields,” are manifestations of cell membrane instability and typically trigger abnormal autonomic nervous system responses. Interference fields may be found in scars, autonomic ganglia, teeth, internal organs or other locations where local tissue irritation exists.

Anyway, the scar looks a lot better. And Pamper seems to have stopped picking at it.

Thanks for all your comments! As always, they helped me calm down in cases where I can’t get to the vet right away.

[Megabunny]

Well, glad it’s healing up. Sometimes they just need to heal from the inside out, which is what LBJ was striving for. But hopefully her system will continue to do the work. Can’t understand a word of that neutral therapy, though LBJ probably can! Hope she continues to heal!!

[LBJ10]

Megabunny – The autonomic nervous system is the stuff controlled by the hypothalamus. In other words, this is the part of the nervous system that controls involuntary functions (think internal organs, etc).

Anyway, neural therapy is an alternative medicine technique. It involves injecting local anesthetics directing into the source of the pain. In this case, it is the incision site. They might also do the injection directly into the nerves since nerve pain can actually do some pretty strange things like cause other “seemingly unrelated” parts to hurt as well. This isn’t a common practice in the US, but I think in it’s more common in other parts of the world.

[Megabunny]

Well why didn’t they just say so? YOUR explanation makes sense! I’ve never heard of that. Odd but interesting.

[LBJ10]

And here I thought I wasn’t making sense. LOL I guess when I think about it, I think of pain manifesting in areas other than the true source because everything is connected through nerves. It reminds me of my car accident. I actually had a neck injury, but I had pain traveling down my arm and even all the way to my wrist.

[PamperB]

It’s amazing how the injury healed. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ll post pics later so you can see for yourself!

[Bam]

Yay! Great that it has healed!

[Author]

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