Broken rear leg

Hi everyone, I've been meaning to sign up to a cat forum for some time. Just to share the joy of living with cats really, as my bunch has been trouble-free... until today that is. I have four cats: Yoda that I rescued from the street 5,5yrs ago and a family I rescued last October: mom named Padmé and two siblings: Leia and Luke. I shall make all the introductions at a later time but for now I'd just like to consult on a rather urging matter. 

I haven't actually witnessed the event but apparently one of my babies managed to move a door that was leaning against the wall (waiting to be installed) and it fell on Leia. I bet on Luke as he has the mass required for such task. Since I wasn't there when it happened, I wouldn't even know that the falling door reached one of the cats but Leia was limping and was generally scared.

I live in Chile for about a decade and have cat(s) since Yoda, but I don't actually have a trusted vet, so we rushed to the nearest one that could offer the on-site radiography. The diagnosis: closed fracture with dislocation on the lower part of tibia, near the joint. According to the vet, the surgery is needed and he scheduled it for tomorrow.

My questions to the more experienced:

- what are the correct/usual proceedings in similar cases, what should I expect in the upcoming days/weeks/months? 

- the bone didn't perforate the skin but when touching the leg you can feel the dislocation. The vet didn't immobilize the leg, just ordered to keep her in a small cage, to minimize her movement and prescribed: Tramadol hydrochloride, Enrofloxacin and Ketoprofen. One usually immobilizes a fractured limb on a human being, was he right not to do it on a cat to pass the night?

Normally this girl is like a spark, a furry ball of emotion. She's still "under influence" right now but of course she's trying to get out of the cage. We take turns in caressing her and hopefully we'll pass through the night without complications. I'd really appreciate any advice as on Thursday I'll have to decide if I trust this clinic enough to let them cut Leia or if I'll look for someone else to do it.

Oh, and BTW, this is Leia:

  OMG! So sorry for poor little beautiful Leia! I am by no means a vet, and have not had this happen to any of my kitties, TG, but I did grow up training horses , my mom was a dog breeder, it has always been my experience that they would temporarily support and wrap the broken limb till surgery can be done. It seems like it would make even more sense to do so if you r told to keep her in a cage which she is obviously going to stress and try to get out of, possibly hurting herself more.

    I would sleep right next to her, arm in the cage, try to make her as comfortable as possible till morning when you can do something more for her.

Maia and I will being thinking of little princess Leia......

Thank you for the good vibes. 

She's calmed down and even ate some yogurt. Since she's calm I won't be bothering her trying to immobilize the leg now. Wouldn't like to excite her too much. Believe me, it's easy with Leia. Will see how the things evolve. 

That's exactly the plan: to sleep next to her, caressing her all the time. We put her into the fabric crate with a zipper, it makes it easier to keep the hand inside and not let her to get out at the same time. In the morning I'll try to get a second opinion anyway. The clinic retained x-ray photos for the surgeon but I can always think of some excuse, pick them up and go somewhere else.

Boy, do I feel s*itty! Why do accidents always look so easily avoidable in retrospective?

 They r your xrays, you payed for them and have every right to get them and take them to another vet for a second opinion.................

    Believe me I know the guilty feeling of an accident that could have been avoided! It has made me such the paranoia cat mom now....

   Hope you both get some sleep and good luck in the am.....

Hmm... brings back memories...

When our kittens were about 4 months old, we took a quick holiday weekend trip.  A friend of ours agreed to check on them twice a day for food, play, and any necessary clean up.

Wouldn't ya know, over Christmas Eve dinner we got a phone call.  Pippen seemed to have done something to his leg.  My friend described it as "at an odd angle", even though he was running around on it.  Of course we rushed home.

The leg was exactly as my friend had described, and none of the vets were open... go figure.

So, Pippen has to wait until after Christmas to even get seen.  We were hoping it was nothing more than a dislocation, but no such luck.  There was a severe fracture right at the "elbow" in his back leg.  It basically broke just below the joint.  Since he was still a kitten, and his bones were still developing, we had to get a specialist to work on it.... And the specialist was from Virginia, literally across the continent.  The one in CA was unavailable.  All told, it was 8 days from the day of the break until the day of his surgery!  I was very unhappy about this, but there was literally nothing I could do about it (and yes, I researched the specialists to see if someone was closer). 

For those 8 days, we had to keep Pippen, a 4 month old kitten, in a crate.  The leg did not get wrapped.  Yes, he had painkillers, but he was so lonely, he cried a lot.  Hubby couldn't stand it, and often slept in the "kitten room" on a bedroll and sleeping bag to keep the poor baby company.

The leg had to be pinned, and Pippen had to be crated for another 3-4 weeks because we couldn't trust him to stay calm and lazy... he was a kitten!  he wanted to play!  That had to have been the worst 4 weeks ever, for all of us.

Pippen's leg healed nicely, and he was soon jumping atop the refrigerator again.  I think half the time he did it just to listen to me scold him for it.  To this day, he is still our little attention w**re. 

cheylink said:

   Believe me I know the guilty feeling of an accident that could have been avoided! It has made me such the paranoia cat mom now....

Click to expand...

I thought I was paranoid too. Those little rascals proved me wrong.

Furmonster Mom said:

Pippen's leg healed nicely, and he was soon jumping atop the refrigerator again.  I think half the time he did it just to listen to me scold him for it.  To this day, he is still our little attention w**re. 

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your story. It must have been a nightmare to wait for 8 days until surgery and not being able to do anything about it. I mean, the next 3-4 weeks you mentioned were no fun either and I completely understand why you describe it as the worst 4 weeks ever. But at least he was healing at that time and not waiting in uncertainty. I'm glad Pippen's leg healed nicely, hope Leia will heal just like he did.

Too many people call themselves 'specialists' these days, it's really confusing. The surgery at the clinic I mentioned got postponed till Friday (today that is) since the surgeon has just got back from his winter vacation in Argentina and wasn't performing any surgeries on Thursday. Of course I started calling other clinics at once, trying to get something done sooner. I won't even dignify this little adventure of mine by relating the details. It should be enough to say that I've chosen to wait one more day instead of dragging poor Leia all around the city to see what happens.

In the meantime it turned out that the vet who attended us didn't know how to read x-rays. Well, I don't either, but I'm not starting my own practice anytime soon. I spoke to the surgeon on Thursday and he told me that the bone is not broken. Instead, the joint between the tibia and the tarsal bone got disrupted. Probably not because Leia was hit by falling door but because of some failed maneuver she did when she got scared. There is a wooden table nearby, if she was on the top of it while the door was falling, she could have lost her traction/balance.

He told me that he won't know for sure until the surgery, but the most probable treatment will be pinning the joint to facilitate its bonding. According to what he said, after the surgery the joint will most likely not be operative but this particular joint doesn't matter much to the cat. She will have this leg a bit stiffer but, according to his version, that's about it - she will run again.

In the meantime I'm looking at 4 weeks of joy with a pin sticking out of Leia's leg, just as Furmonster Mom described. It will be hell. As I wrote before, she's a veeeery lively cat, she never stops, she's a combustion spark of most cat-riots that happen in this hous. For the last two days, during the playtime, her brother and her mother were looking helplessly at each other since the initiating element was missing.

However, I must say that she survived these two days bravely. Apart from the occasional and obvious resistance, she was pretty easy to calm and seemed to accept the situation. The only trouble was that she needed constant companion or she'd start to cry. She didn't ask for any special attention, caressing and whatnot. She just wanted someone to be close all the time. And I mean ALL the time. So we were working together, eating together, watching movies together and sleeping together (if one can call that stand-by state a sleep). She'd act in her special way to let us know she wanted to go to the bathroom, she was eating a little bit less than usually but with no complications.

Well, that's about it. I'm going to pick her up in about 3 hours and the next chapter will begin. I have a room with no furniture in it where I'll throw a mattress and where we'll probably live for the next month. On the way home I bought a large cage for rabbits, the only thing I have found that could serve the purpose of restricting her movements and is bigger than any crate I have. It needs some modifications so she won't mess with the grille and I doubt I'll put her inside during the first week, but hopefully it'll turn out to be a good idea. If not, I can always get it back to the store... or buy some rabbits for the cat's entertainment. The cage looks like this:



I've already started to work on some DIY e-collar alternative since I can't imagine her using the original design. I will appreciate all the suggestions you can provide, maybe someone have already tested some good project and could recommend it. I'd love to use something like this:

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=19210

but can't find it locally. I have an inflatable travel pillow but it's too big and I don't see how could it be modified.

OK, wish us luck. They just called that the surgery went well and confirmed the hour to pick her up. I don't care about loosing the upcoming month from my life, I just want Leia back - limping or not but as cheerful, crazy and innocent as she always is.