Oh what a horrific Sunday.  We got up Sunday morning to find Pip's cage
covered in blood.  It was everywhere, it looked like a bad horror movie.
(Pip is recovering from adrenal surgery and his stitches were scheduled
to come out November 2nd.)
 
Seems Pip ripped out his stitches by scratching, but wait, it gets worse,
while he was he ripping out the stitches, he also ripped open the incision
and proceeded to pull some of his innards out!  I can not tell you how
horrified we were.  We rushed him to the emergency vet and they stabilized
him.  They told us that it was not his intestines that we were seeing but
a layer of fat and the fat did what it was supposed to do, seal the hole
until the animal can get help.  They wanted to open him up, irrigate the
wound, clean up anything that needed cleaning and close up the wound for
$958.  Needless to say, I don't have that kind of money.  Hell, I don't
have $100 to my name right now.  We had to make a decision, we talked about
putting him down (didn't want to do that), trying to get a hold of regular
vet (hadn't been able to do that so far), or finding another vet that would
let us make payments.  We decided on the last one.  As we were leaving the
emergency room with a bandaged ferret my husband decided to drive by our
regular vet and see if there was another number listed to call.
 
It was a miracle, that was a car there, I knocked on the door.  The intern
recognized me and brought us in, she called the doctor and she came in the
office to perform the necessary surgery.
 
Pip is doing fine, nothing was damaged by his scratching or dragging around
his innards.  He now has 30 individual stitches over the incision and we
should be able to get him tonight.
 
This has been a total nightmare.  I have no idea how I'm going to pay for
his last surgery, but the vet is working with us on payments and price so
I'm counting my blessings.
 
I have been told that Pip has 30 stitches, bandaged, has a C-collar on, and
has little boots taped to his back paws so he can't scratch.  But on the up
side, he is alive and the vet said he will make a full recovery.
[Posted in FML issue 2853]