
********WARNING******** Graphic photos of Teddy’s abscess are to follow.
It has been nearly eight weeks since Teddy had his op to lance & drain his abscess. To say it’s been stressful is an understatement, not just for me but for Teddy & everyone else involved.

It was always a little difficult with Teddy’s abscess to know whether the lump you could feel was swelling, as it was an invasive op, or whether it was pus. Teddy did manage to rip out one of his staples shortly after his op & the other staple got clogged with all his blood stained fur. You can see the lump of fur that got stuck on the staple in the photo above, it’s the black looking lump on the left. I initially thought we would start to get pus out of the wound immediately but he did ten days before any appeared. When we did get some out it was the most awful smelling stuff you can imagine.

The above photo is of Teddy’s abscess four days later from the previous photo. The first thing to notice is the clump of matted fur has gone, Teddy had the staple removed & that meant I could clean off all the blood that had matted the fur. You will also notice his lump looks massive in this photo, we were never sure if it was the angle the photo was taken or if indeed it had grown. What made us doubt it had grown is that it didn’t feel any bigger but it’s hard to think it hadn’t grown when you look at the photo. You will see a white blob in his wound, I initially wondered if this was one of the antibiotic beads as it was rock hard. I contacted my vet & he said it is probably a hard bit of pus & the beads should have dissolved by now. The following day it came out & it was a hard bit of pus. I could not believe how hard it was, if you tapped it, it sounded like tapping a piece of hard plastic. After this came out I managed to get a lot more pus out, it was almost as if the cork had popped.

A week later & as you can see from the photo above, his abscess had dramatically reduced but his wound was healing making it difficult to expel any pus. It was agreed that Teddy would be sedated & his wound reopened. This was done & fortunately the vet managed to get most of the pus out, in fact it came out in one big lump. The wound was only reopened a little.

A week later, the photo above is what his wound looked like & as you can see no lump is visible now. It was quite unbelievable how the abscess has shrunk. I was also getting runny pus out of it too, which is unusual as rabbit pus is normally like thick cottage cheese.

Since the above photo was taken which was about three weeks ago, Teddy’s abscess has practically gone, all you can feel now is a string like swelling but it is hard to know if that is scar tissue, the abscess or the abscess capsule. Both Teddy & Annie had a trip to the vets this week & they are both to do two more weeks on antibiotics & then they are to stop. Annie’s abscess is now just a tiny, tiny lump but it’s the same scenario, is it scar tissue, the abscess or abscess capsule? For both we have to hope the lumps go or at least hope they are not the abscess capsule, if it is the capsule the abscess will come straight back.
Teddy has coped well with all the handling & medication. What helped was the good ole cat bed. He actually started using it before Annie to travel back home in. This was a good stress buster as he seemed really happy to be carried back to his pen in it.



Teddy’s wound has also healed so he has now been reunited with Daisy.
