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Tallulah has an abscess :(

The vet was quite pleased, Tallulah has helpfully saved him a tough decision about whether to completely re-open the wound to drain the seroma by taking her own stitches out during the night. So its completely open (great big hole) but no more oozing, and the raggy looking wound edges have sort of scabbed up and flaked off and the manula honey has helped a lot. No buprenorphine today, as she's not really in any pain, but we can give extra loxicom if needed. Unless she manages to do anything else strange with her neck wound its a saline flush then manuka honey twice a day and go back on wednesday. She will however always be a hunch-back hippo, with a scar like a bullet hole in her big scar tissue hump, if she survives. As if she wasn't funny looking enough already :)
 
I’ve been following this - poor little sweetheart! You’re doing an amazing job with her - I’ve had excellent results with Manuka Honey on wounds xx

I really, really hope she pulls through all of this and heals up quickly, bless her xx
 
I've been reading a few of the veterinary case studies where manuka honey has been used and its quite reassuring to see how often it has been successfully used to treat animals with great big yucky holes in them! There was one with a horse that had cut its leg then chewed its stitches out down to the bone and it got better...
 
Glad to hear that Tallulah is a little better today. Hopefully the manuka honey will continue to work it's magic. Big hugs and healing vibes being sent your way. :hug:
 
The honey's definitely helped with Ped (even though taken months!). It's kept it more open, especially overnight, so nastiness can drain out and helped when it is red and sore.
Hope it can help your gorgeous little holey hippo :)
 
Oh dear just did my first wound flush on the new big volcano crater fully open wound and I felt like such a monster :( I'm guessing the brown bits are dried blood or scabs or bits of debriding wound edges where her skin went funny and need rinsing off? I darent actually wipe it like the vet was (he was aggressively rubbing it with cotton wool soaked in hibiscrub) so I'm just squeezing cotton pads soaked in sterile saline a few cm above the wound and giving her a bit of a directed saline shower... would a syringe be better? There's no infection to flush out just leaking blood and seroma fluid and bits of dead tissue to rinse away... Piggy daddy was standing by with small pink handkerchiefs to use as baby hippo towels to dry the rest of her off... she didnt like it at all :(
 
Poor baby hippo :( it's heartbreaking. We had to pull the scabs off of Elizas eye socket to keep it open and she screamed the place down :( May be a fine needle in the syringe will help to squirt the water in? We had to do that with Eliza. You don't put it in the actual wound but just above. Your vet can show you how
 
Thanks @Claire W I will try with a syringe without a needle first as I just had some extra syringes delivered along with another 20 days worth of recovery food (guessing this may be a long recovery!) But if that isnt squirty enough I'll ask the vet. He seemed fine scrubbing at it with cotton wool and hibiscrub but I wouldnt want to get bits of fluff in there or rub too hard- or make her hate me! Piggy daddy always does the nice nursing bits and I always have to be the bad guy :(
 
Ok she's not that traumatised, she's eaten a big bowl of pellets and a slice of cucumber and a slice of red pepper since her wound flushing ordeal an hour ago... and she's flirting with Theo through the cage bars... and there's me wondering whether to contact the emergency out of ours vet service and beg for a buprenorphine injection the amount she was squealing! Its 0.15mls of loxicom and a dollop of manuka honey for you little drama hippo :)
 
Poor Theo is going to be disappointed where Tallulah is concerned how frustrated must he feel?
 
Theo has 5 ladies of his own which is plenty to be going on with, although I would have loved it if Tallulah had joined the herd... but if the boss lady doesnt like her and every misjudged nip could result in this sort of malarky then I think little hippo is better off with a devoted husboar of her own and no female rivals to squabble with! If all goes well that's the plan anyway, but first we need to sort this neck-volcano-camel hump-crater out. So slowly does things :)
But there are a lot of lonely little boars out there...
 
Just caught up with today’s news.
Things do sound more positive for the lovely, feisty Tallulah.
Hope the honey treatment continues to work
 
PigglePuggle said:
Thanks @Claire W I will try with a syringe without a needle first as I just had some extra syringes delivered along with another 20 days worth of recovery food (guessing this may be a long recovery!) But if that isnt squirty enough I'll ask the vet. He seemed fine scrubbing at it with cotton wool and hibiscrub but I wouldnt want to get bits of fluff in there or rub too hard- or make her hate me! Piggy daddy always does the nice nursing bits and I always have to be the bad guy :(
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I have to be both the good and the bad guy with Pedro, felt so incredibly cruel when I first started all the flushing :( he still screams his head off at me now (definitely more with the 'picking bits off' thing though as @Claire W says!, doesn't really mind the syringe/needle thing too much anymore).
I do have to be quite firm with him and the wound when wiping stuff, I soak a cotton wool pad with saline, hold it on for 10seconds or so then wipe (repeat, repeat!). He hates it but it's for his own good (as I have to tell myself when he looks at me all sad!). Thankfully he forgives me!

Glad she's doing well tonight :)
 
Bless her - and you too. Miserable for both of you. On the plus side it seems like crazy franked bat eared hippo humpback psycho pig has no idea she's really quite poorly. Fingers massively crossed she never twigs :P
 
I have a phone reminder set, "put honey on hippo" :) as well as about 12 other bat-hippo related phone reminders per day, "Tallulah baytril and loxicom", "Tallulah syringe feed and pro-C", "Tallulah wound flush", "Make sterile saline", "Make fresh syringe feed and pro-C", "Tallulah vets" etc. She's keeping us busy! :)
 
I know that feeling (and all the tiredness when it all first started!) Thankfully the amount of alarms have crept down now though!
 
I don't know how I missed this! Poor little bat hippo, what a wild ride it's been! I hope she's right as rain again soon bless her.
 
Happy with my hippo today... I was really worried because we were both out at work all day so she hadnt been checked on or fed since 8am... feeling so guilty when I came home, dreading opening the piggy room door just in case... then I did and found little hippo has spent the day spraying pee all over the place, and has invented a new game where she popcorns onto her wooden house roof, popcorns off again to land on her fleecy house which she has squashed to make a trampoline, then zooming up and down wheeking merrily.
Swelling down a lot, neck wound much smaller, no more oozing... I'm a bit worried if its healing too fast and we're meant to keep it open but the hole was so big and wet and raggy before it looked like it would just get horribly infected and never heal... now it does indeed look like a bullet wound but I can sort of see that it might heal ok... early days still, the vet said healing might a month, at least 2 or 3 weeks until we see which way things are going, but... today she's a happy little hippo and I'm a happy hippo slave :)
 
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