Rosie is sick

We think she’s going to be ok. She has a large abscess on her head. She went to the emergency vet last night, where they lacerated it, performed a saline rinse, and gave her antibiotics and pain killers. I’ll take her to my vet in Santa Fe on Monday morning for a follow-up.

She hasn’t eaten well all week, but we didn’t think too much of it at first, because she often loses her appetite. When I got to Placitas on Friday night, I looked her over, in particular her belly, but couldn’t see anything wrong. By Saturday morning I thought she might have an ear infection, and I gave her ear drops. I went to give her more ear drops on Saturday night and that’s when I discovered her head was swollen and her right eye was pushed shut. It felt like there was water under her skin.

We took her right away to a 24-hour emergency vet in Albuquerque. The freeway was closed in one section, so it took awhile to get to Albuquerque. Finally we arrived, filled out the paperwork, and waited and waited. After half an hour went by and no one had even glanced at her yet, I asked about the wait time. They said another hour. So I started calling around. The other well-known vet, on the same street, also reported an hour wait. That vet suggested we call a third emergency vet I had never heard of, in a sketchier part of town. The third vet said they could take her right in, so we drove over there. By that time it had been well over two hours and it was late in the evening.

The new vet took her back to examine her immediately. They said they would need to sedate her, but promised to go light with the sedation, given her age and the fact that she was very lethargic already. She is also very patient with procedures and rarely wiggles or even shows pain. The procedure took less than half an hour, and she was never all the way under.

She looks terrible. They shaved half her head, and they want the abscess to continue to drain. So yeah. Open head wound. Also it’s still swollen and misshapen. I’ve got some really gory close-up photos that I won’t post. Here’s one from a distance.