Abscess treatment question

[Dr. Doolittle]

Thursday, 10/2, the girls were spayed. They were on metacam 2x a day for 5 days; their appetites returned to normal after a day (which was a relief as Honey had just recuperated from stasis a few weeks prior). 

They went in yesterday to have their incisions checked and to have stitches removed. Well, I dropped the ball, big time. Once they finished the metacam and were doing so well (and their incisions seemed to be healing nicely), I stopped checking their incisions.

At the vet yesterday, we flipped over Honey so the tech could remove her stitches and there was an ugly bump with a scab on it. He brought Honey outback to see the on-duty vet and the vet said it was probably okay (hmmmm. . .) but when the tech was cutting the stitches he moved the scab and we could see pus inside. We called the vet into the room at this point and he used hydrogen peroxide to flush it out and told me to do this 2x a day at home and to keep an eye on it. He said it seemed very shallow. We were at the local “exotics” vet; however, the vet who typically treats our rabbits and who did the spay is out for his own surgery. It didn’t occur to me until we got home that the vet who saw us might not be a fully bunny-savvy vet.

My question for those of you who have dealt with such things: have you ever “just” used peroxide to flush an abscess without also giving antibiotics? Antibiotics scare me a bit (I’m nervous about screwing up gut flora and causing bigger issues), but I also don’t want this abscess to take a turn for the worse because we aren’t being aggressive enough.  

There is another bunny-savvy vet about an hour from us that I can call; I wanted to see if I am hyper-sensitive and overreacting before I put her through the stress of a long car ride. Thanks!

[Sarita]

It might be fine with just peroxide…I guess what I would do is just watch it and then if I felt more concerned that it was going away then I would go back to the vet.

[Dr. Doolittle]

Thank you, Sarita. We’re prepping to do her 2nd flushing of the day. If it looks worse when we do her AM flushing, I will call the alternate vet. Poor little girl! She seems to be doing okay–still has a hearty appetite and did a quick Bunny 500 when I brought down their greens a bit ago.

[Dr. Doolittle]

Sigh. It closed over and the lump is bigger. Calling the vet in a few.

Poor girl. She’s so tired of us poking and prodding her (this is the bun that had stasis last month). This morning when we went down to care for them, Luna was happy and excited because they get a scattering of pellets first thing in the AM. Honey was out until she saw me coming with the “tray” (the corningware we carry the meds/supplies on) and then she promptly tried to hide in the back of their condo.

[Sarita]

That’s frustrating. It may be a matter of having the vet do a really good flush and some antibiotics.

I’ve only dealt with dental abscesses which are a bugger to deal with as well and I’ve always done the pen-g shots for the dental abscesses.

[Author]

Messages