Unfortunately Ziggy has decided he's just not quiiiiiite done with everything yet.

Since his suture removal, there's one spot at the "head" of his incision where the vet had to kind of tuck the skin in to close things off, and it made a little pocket, or bellybutton as the vet calls it. I kind of figured that would be slower to heal since it doesn't really get any air, but it's still been leaking some clear to pinkish fluid, enough that it gets a tiny bit crusty at times. Yesterday I thought he felt very warm, but our AC was broken for a few hours and we live in Texas so I thought I was just being paranoid.

Nevertheless, I called the vet just to ask if this should be worrying or if it was normal and she wanted to see him. My heart dropped when she called back this afternoon and asked if my wife and I could both hear her okay.

It turns out that the infection that we took him in for shortly after his surgery apparently never really went away, and moved to the bit of his femur they left in there. Additionally, the infection must have weakened the muscle that they wrapped around the end of the bone because it's completely gone, and it's basically just the end of his bone right under his skin. Looking back, I have noticed that he's been less and less happy with his stump being touched and now it makes sense as to why. That pocket of skin didn't really heal up because his body is using it to drain fluid related to the infection, which is why it's still pink and not clear.

We had two options here, and all four of the vets consulted on this today. Either we could try aggressively treating with antibiotics and hope we get the infection this time, or they could do a smaller surgery and just remove the piece of bone. While we don't want to put him through another surgery, with a bone infection we don't want to risk his life just to keep a bone that will probably cause him issues later, since it's not padded anymore like it was originally. He's back on Veraflox until Monday, and she and another vet are going to consult on a firm treatment plan and will call us tomorrow.

Right now the plan is to take him back Monday and they'll do a smaller incision to remove the remainder of his femur, and they should also be able to eliminate that little pocket of skin too. She wants to keep him for a few days after that since he had such a rocky start at the beginning last time... and this probably means a cone again, hahaha. Definitely not ideal (and we're kinda bummed because his fur has really started to grow back, LOL) but hopefully this will get rid of the infection and spare him a lot of discomfort later on down the line.

This has been such a rough process for all of us, especially Ziggy. Please keep us in your thoughts and send good vibes... feels like we're almost back to square one here. 😔

The vet actually did talk to us about that a little bit, and she said basically the best practice advice seems to flip flop back and forth every year or two. In Ziggy's case since it was trauma to his lower leg and not cancer, she left about 1/3 to help him balance and all. It was perfect at first, the muscle healed well, it was really well-padded. It probably would have been fine had he not gotten that initial infection, and even then she said it was really unusual for it to have moved into the bone like it did since he was on Veraflox the whole time.

Had I been given a choice and knowing what I know now, I think I would have just asked for the whole bone to be removed instead. And even so, I'm not upset with the vet at all. I think Ziggy is just one of those cats that had really be run of weird and worst-possible results here. Infection, necrotic tissue, incision reopening, and now another infection. Or more of the same infection, whichever. Our vet was horrified when she felt around and pretty much just felt bare bone under the skin, and she got pretty choked up relaying it to us.

Another one of the vets there actually has a tripawd of her own, an accident victim that the owners felt they needed to have euthanized but the vet fell in love with her. She had a partial bone that had to be removed as well because of pressure sores.

Aside from being skittish, which has faded slightly, Ziggy's actually been really great. If it hadn't been for that little leaky spot I never would have realized he was sick at all. At this moment he's in his spot in my recliner nestled against my leg, happy as he can be. It's a little bright spot to know that he's not in excruciating pain at the moment and that it's not so sure that emergency surgery was needed or anything.

We did have a really upset moment earlier and I had a little bit of a cry, but we try to stay upbeat about things. If we're happy Ziggy tends to be happier too. Give Mona some love for us, too!

Thank you Krun! We didn't really get a choice about whether or not they did the femoral amo but the vet really did weigh the options and explained her choice to us. She's never steered us wrong and she always errs on the side of caution so I trust her. But it's nice to hear that this isn't a weird place to have the amputation done!

I'll admit that seeing the bone stub was kind of creeping me out more and more but now I know why, because that padding has slipped. It's frustrating because she said it looked so nice when they closed him up initially, and when he had to go back for the tissue removal and revision the muscle was already healed up so we'll.

Of course now my only concern is getting rid of that infection and after losing our first baby boy last year, we don't want to risk anything worse happening to Ziggy so the bone needs to go. At least they can get rid of that weird skin pocket at the same time... and then the cone adventure begins all over again, noooooooo. LOL

To be honest I kind of expect the worst every time I take him there, and after the initial shock of the accident and hearing them say he might need an amputation, I'm kind of numb to the rest of it? Line don't get me wrong, when she said he had a bone infection I started crying because I was afraid she was about to say that they couldn't fix it, but when she said they could I calmed down. There was a LOT of crying about the initial amputation though. 

She seems really confident about the surgery. The infection is in the bone so removing that should remove the source of the infection, and of course she put him on an antibiotic now to they to clean things up prior to the surgery, and he'll be on them for a while afterwards.

I'm definitely going to ask her about whether or not we should try a different antibiotic though, since he was on Veraflox for nearly a month and somehow this infection still took hold.

I'll fully admit that I tend to be pretty paranoid about the cats and their health, but so far I think only one of the vet runs turned out to be nothing much. Ziggy rightfully hates the carrier now and does whatever he can to avoid it. Mostly we just want our poor sweet boy to be healthy again.