Animal ER: Down the Rabbit Hole (Full Episode) | Nat Geo Wild
Animal ER: Down the Rabbit Hole is an emotional rollercoaster of a full episode on Nat Geo Wild. The episode follows various cases of animals in dire need of medical attention. From Constantino, the Siamese cat with a fractured hip, to Gandalf, the angora rabbit with an infected eye, and Toby, the malt with a herniated disc, the episode showcases the dedication and expertise of the veterinarians at Gulf Coast Veterinary Emergency Hospital.
Raisin, the pointer mix, undergoes a complicated surgery to fix a badly broken leg that had become infected. Despite the challenges of dealing with scar tissue, Dr. Whitney successfully mends his fracture, allowing Raisin to walk again. Toby, the maltese, also sees improvement after back surgery to remove a herniated disc as he starts using his back legs again. Zuri, the African serval, receives a feeding tube to aid in her recovery from pancreatitis, showing promising signs of improvement.
Animal ER: Down the Rabbit Hole is a heartwarming and inspiring episode that highlights the resilience of animals and the dedication of veterinarians in providing the best possible care for their furry patients.
Watch the video by Nat Geo WILD
On animal er a hysterical owner I’m really concerned it’s kind of like my baby proves more challenging for her doctor try to stay calm if you can okay and the patient you can just sit down okay that’s the Bon sticking through fixing a horrible leg injury you got The
Perfect Storm there for nasty infection this is bad pushes one of Golf Coast veterinarians come on to the edge God us this is brutal and a malti suddenly loses the ability to walk and his surgery can you Dr Joella becomes an all hands on deck emergency really doesn’t
Want to come out I don’t know what else to do it’s animal medicine here a big butb at a whole new Level raisin a pointer mix has arrived at Golf Coast emergency room with a broken leg caused by a dog bite that happened a week ago raisin owner and the referring veterinarian were having a conversation about whether it would be best to amputate the leg or go for
Euthanasia so he came to us for a second opinion but there was a delay in treatment the fact that it took so long for raisin to get to Gulf Coast can cause some serious complications surgical staff veterinarian Dr leam merkins sees problems right away so that’s the bone
Sticking through open fracture it’s a week old it’s always very disconcerting to see bone sticking through skin the fact that it had been going on a week um was pretty evident by looking at the soft tissues around his forearm I mean a small amount of smelling would be normal
This m well not normal flush it we need to get a culture we need to start IV antibiotics this guy’s a pretty brave dog have been dealing with this for so long this case is not going to be a oneandone case and it’s going to be really difficult to get a plan together
For him this leg is on the verge of being amputated all right just in case hold that foot after flushing the wound for 3 Days Dr merkins calls an orthopedic surgeon Dr Wayne Whitney one of the most experienced specialist at Golf Coast you can kind of reimagine the
Bite I would say probably one K9 tooth one here one can9 tooth went here one there bite wounds are a big deal not only are these teeth caus cusing tremendous damage but they’re also like inoculating like an injection bad bacteria in the mouth and so you’ve got The Perfect Storm there for nasty
Infections the problem with Raisin was it had been growing for you know all these days so it’s just a nasty mess that bone does not look very healthy just we’ve got to get this infection under control this is really hard even without seeing any x-rays this is a bad
High-risk situation did you see this Caleb distal and nasty and 10 days old yeah that’s pretty SW so I was hoping you would tell me how to fix it you’re a good dog I’m sorry this happens to you the infection is so bad Dr Whitney can’t even consider surgery
We can’t just go in and put a plate and screws right now and sew it up you know it’s infected and it’ll just puss out in just a few days we’ve got such a small little piece right in front of the joint if we prematurely close this down or
Can’t control the infection or get a resistant organism that’s going to cause our screws to loosen and we’re going to lose that little piece of bone and then we’re going to lose the leg this is bad you know uh it’s a hard case Constantino is a year- old Siamese
Cat who leg troubles are deeply upsetting his owner Amanda I came to a Golf Coast because my cat has been limping really bad it’s to the point where he can’t walk or stand I’m really concerned it’s kind of like my baby and I care Lots about
Him hi good morning how are you I’m okay I’m Britney Neil nice to meet you I’m Amanda oh you’re having a hard day huh yeah I’m just super attached to and really worried don’t worry we’ll get him figured out okay the other day he like fell in the lit box and then sometimes
He’ll just like pull himself along the floor instead of trying even to walk and I mean like I have no idea what happened so all right and he’s a young guy right he’s only about a year old yeah he had a really bad experience like on Saturday
So oh know he got stressed out yeah okay well we’ll try to be as gentle as possible but I want to tell you I mean these guys do feed off of your because I mean all he does really is watch you all day every day so if you’re
Upset then he’s going to be upset so try to stay calm if you can okay yeah I can tell that she’s really upset but I need her to stay as calm as possible for Constantino’s sake all right oh that’s scary okay you can just sit down I just
Feel bad I know I understand but the more you get worked I promise you then he’s going to be worked up I can feel crepitus in his joint which is instability okay he has crepitus which is a popping feeling in his hip so knowing that he’s a
One-year-old cat and he has hip pain what my top differential would be is a fracture in the top part of his femur but the first step is x-rays so we do need x-rays to get a definitive diagnosis for you and we are going to need to sedate
Him do you think that X will do anything cuz my biggest fear is that I’ve had cats pass away before being sedated so it’s just super sensitive it seemed like she was skeptical about the need to sedate a pet she had had a previous cat that had had some sort of reaction to
Sedation or anesthesia I think her imagination was sort of running wild and she was worried about the worst possible things that could happen I would just need you to trust me on this one and just know that sedation is the better option rather than having him so stressed Amanda was very emotional
During the consult we don’t learn about bedside manner necessarily in vet school but I believe bedside manner is imperative I think it’s important to listen to their concerns and to be responsive we’re very invested in our patients and it’s important for clients to feel comfortable with their care that
They’re receiving here I mean so we like have to get these x-rays you can’t just like tell like from I don’t know in order to find a diagnosis for you and help him feel better we have to do an x-ray sedation is essential Constantino won’t be able to tolerate X-rays and
Being on an X-ray table and being manipulated in a certain way laying still on his back long enough for us to get those images we I’ve literally lost an home by it so it’s just like so it’s really hard you know it’s one of those
Things where if you want a to figure out what’s going on we need to trust us and allow us to do what we need to do oh my goodness you’re a big FFF ball an angora rabbit named Gandalf has an infection that’s causing his eye to Dangerously bulge out of its socket has
He been able to Blink at all he blinks a little bit but you can see when I touch his eye on this side he closes it all the way right with his eye being bulging it probably has difficulty to see you can’t close it all the way you would see
That this eye is probably out twice as much as this one when I press on top of his head you can tell that’s very asymmetric that there’s definitely a swelling associated with that whole right side of his face do you see this is his eye can you see all this abnormal
Tissue here like normally it looks like this it’s like bigger than his eye itself and that’s why it’s pushing it out of its socket what the CT scan is telling me is that not only is this abscess affecting Gandalf’s eye it’s also dangerously close to his brain the only thing that’s separating this
Abscess from the brain cavity is like a thin membrane at this point if it goes past that and goes into its brain obviously an infection in the brain is much much more serious a lot of abscesses are related to a tooth problem so I wanted to see if we could actually
Remove that tooth it also helps absess his drain obviously save the rabbit’s the most important and secondly save the eye he’s an awesome bunny he’s you can’t tell right now because he’s kind of out of it but he’s in a very unique bunny he is super friendly really chill loves
People or run right up to a dog and he’s a tough little fun little Guy is he warm enough he’s 98.6 Gandalf is sedated as Dr Chin delicately tries to remove the rear tooth see it’s loose I can’t get the right angle which is really frustrating basically the problem is I have all the other teeth in the way it’s not working but the procedure suddenly hits another
Snag that’s a lot of blood now I I need a Q-tips I need Q-tips and up up them please Gandalf the angor rabbit is undergoing a tooth extraction to drain an enormous abscess behind his eye that’s a lot of blood now I need I need a Q-tips I need Q-tips and that’s enough
Please but Dr Chin Nicks an artery right next to the tooth or have it unfortunately rabbits have this design flaw where they have a pretty big vessel on the back of their mouth and anytime the mucosa is compromised he’ll start bleeding from that area I don’t think
It’s bleeding still but I’m just worried oh and he’s awake now he’s awake Gandalf’s awake but the tooth isn’t going anywhere that tooth just wouldn’t come out and that means the abscess can’t drain if this abscess isn’t drained and treated I don’t think we can save Gandalf’s eye and I think this infection
May spread to his brain we need more than antibiotics to treat this abcess Dr Chen decides on a Cutting Edge Treatment available at G Coast a hyperbaric oxygen chamber will put extra oxygen in to Gandalf’s bloodstream and the infected tissues this will have a healing effect on the infection we will need six
Treatments over the next 3 days we brought the girlfriend to reduce the stress of his Hospital stay you want know see your girlfriend his mate from home Ariel another angor rabbit will provide moral support Ariel and Gandalf are a bonded pair and so the presence of a friend can be
Calming you sitting him up in there yeah cuz now there’s two of them his girlfriend’s staying his yeah his lover is staying so I’m going to give them a more private and luxurious site but what are you going to do with that sa it paper okay here’s your lover your upgraded
Sweet rabbits are very social animals and the reputation for prolific breeding is well earned a single female rabbit or dough can produce a litter of up to 14 babies every month I like Gandalf’s case him and his girlfriend are super cute they’re like the cutest couple when I
Was a little kid I’ve always had rabbits and I know I just think they’re really cute and they’re sweet and they make great Pets oh I have like a nose full of Angora fur constant the Siamese cat’s owner Amanda is concerned about putting him under sedation for an x-ray but it’s the only way Dr Neil can confirm if his hip is fractured you need to trust us and allow us to do what we need to
Do okay yeah I guess let’s date him it’ll be safer for him but we’ll take good care of him you know just rest assured we’re doing this all day every day so we’ll be very very careful he needs some sedation to even tolerate x-rays he’s just very
Nervous how did he do oh yeah look at that oh my goodness Dr Neil’s diagnosis of a fractured hip is confirmed there’s actually a very bad fracture at the top of his femur where the ball part of this ball and socket joint has completely slipped off of the femur so what he
Needs is to have this ball part heart removed all right so let’s go talk to mom cuz she is anxiously waiting okay he’s doing great he’s awake he alive yes he’s alive so he’s like the most active cat I’ve ever seen in my whole entire life so his prognosis is
Excellent he’ll be able to run jump and play you just have to trust us we’re doing this all day every day so we’ll take good care of so you’ve done like this on Plenty of cats tons of them it’s a very very common surgery okay the vet
Made me feel a lot better I think I’m really excited to have him be fixed but I’m just nervous about the procedure today we’re going to be cleaning out Constantino’s hip joint because the ball part has fallen off of the top of his femur so we have to get
This ball part completely out so it’s not creating pain with the bone on bone motion and my major concern really is that the owner is sitting in home worrying I think constantina will do just fine but the owner I’m sure is out of her mind scared and worried today
Look and do you see this femoral head sitting there what I do is take the femoral neck off and then clean it Up you can do the honors if you want and get it out of there this is the femoral neck which connects the body of the femur to the ball part of the hip joint and then now I’m removing the other part of the fracture which is the head of the femur here’s our
Culprit so this is the ball part of that joint the fix is really his body healing The Joint up and he’ll create a synthetic joint with scar tissue the femoral neck connects the femoral head or the ball part of the hip joint to the thigh bone or the femur in Constantino’s
Case the femoral head has broken off so we have to remove it this is different than a hip replacement in this case the hip will heal on its own hello hi there it’s Dr Neil calling about Constantino hi thank you so much for calling he’s all done he’s waking up
Now he’s doing fine and from here we’re just going to keep them comfortable owners want to pick up certainly your verbal cues but also your not nonverbal cues on how things are going so it’s really important to stay calm and positive in Constantino’s case I expect
Him to do wonderfully so I want the owner to start believing that as well thank you so much you’re welcome bye-bye bye raisin the pointer mix came in 3 days ago after a dog bite left him with a badly broken and infected leg that had
Gone untreated for a week we need to get the thing as clean as we can to try to fix it the question is how are we going to do that and how long is it going to take is in a very happy deep sleep we’ll put a sterile catheter tip
On the end of a long line to be able to flush deep into the wound and get everything out of there so now we’re starting to see clean bone which before was covered in pent debris there’s no guarantee that the infection will clear up enough to allow
For leg surgery at all so Dr Whitney meets with raisins owner to prepare him for the unknown outcome Wayne Whitney hi how you doing sir pleasure to meet you this is a long hard Road and you know you have to make sure that you’re confident that the owner is committed
You know I need to meet with them I’m not a carrot dangler I’m a straight shooter tell it how how it is and this is a very difficult and challenging case and I think we both understand that you know we could lose out if we get a bad resistant infection obviously it’s more
Coste effective just to do an amputation up front yeah we we wanted to be able to run again if if he possibly can raising L to run and it was just horrible when I saw that bone that have been broken whenever that uh the fight had occurred
With my dogs I thought if I brought him to the the vet they just want to put him down and yeah good friend of mine said I needed to get him down here him not being able to run would be a would be a real shame you know trust me I’m giving
It my best shot I know Mr prell did not want to amputate my default is what what I’d do if it was my dog and you know I um have to admit I would try to save it but you know this is a hard case to save a leg
On do you want to go ahead and come back and visit to see how he’s doing look at that little boy what you doing buddy ah there’s a Tail Wag how are you doing remember me for me look oh raisin raisin look at this yummy yummy yum I could see
The genuine compassion that Mr Perell had for raisin and I feel very comfortable that we’re on the same page we know this isn’t a slam dunk we could do all this and still lose the leg you be a good boy see you later on I’d like
To keep him whole if he possibly can to be able to run in the grass and run in the park and and just you know have a have a full life after this Toby a 10-year-old malt fell down the stairs at his home and now can’t use his
Back legs all right you ready where here toes oh last night I came back from dinner and I noticed he was at the bottom of the stairs and hind legs where you know they didn’t really Bend and I just felt something was wrong so cute thank you oh my gosh Toby
Is a great dog and uh he’s part of the family basically he’s just been with me all through college and into my adult life I guess so he’s my little baby I don’t know they’re just you just grow so close to them so he just means so much to
Me neurologist Dr Laura Vasquez gives Toby a quick examination but it’s already clear something’s not right Toby looks like he’s paralyzed in his back legs although he can move them just a titch all right you’re okay he’s got a posture called shift sharington so his front legs are very stiff and he wants
To have his head pulled up they’ll have this posture when they have a really severe back injury I don’t think we can rule out neck still I think we may have talked to them about Imaging his whole spine he’s not paralyzed he’s just really really stiff and it made me think
Okay did he did he fall and and break a bone or did he herniate a disc so I want to do an MRI of his back sometimes when you have a really bad back injury it can cause this this change to the front legs and the way they carry their neck and it
Could still be the back I noticed too that when he was panning he was lifting his head up a lot more but I he didn’t look the same okay okay as a neurologist we sometimes see really desperate severe cases and we can’t fix them all and so it can be
Really challenging for some owners to think about worst case scenarios in their own pets and so they can’t imagine that their dog was fine yesterday and then today is at death’s store is this common in like small dogs we do see a fair number of MTI here that have back
Problems it’s kind of embarrassing asz you keep crying but I mean it’s just hard cuz you treat them like as if you’re you know you’re their mom you know you just want to tell them that everything is going to be okay and we’re doing all we can to help you
You’re here and we’re going to try to figure out what’s going on so our recommendation is going to probably to do an MRI of his back we just first have to figure out what’s going on Okay when we look between the second and third lumbar vertebrae he’s got this really bad one here where you can actually see almost like it looks like a rock sitting underneath the spinal cord and the spinal cord’s kind of draped over it in looking at Toby’s back on the
MRI we did see one really bad discarnation between the second and the third lumbar vertebrae it was pretty and it was causing some uh spinal cord swelling Toby’s Advanced age and smaller size makes surgery risky and non-surgical options don’t offer guarantees hi it’s Dr Vasquez he does
Have a herniated disc when you have a herniated disc if the pet still has feeling in his legs or her legs then medical management activity restriction anti-inflammatories has about a 50 to 70% chance of wor working thr away some pain Miss and just see how I reacts to
It yeah yeah I mean that that would be an option for tonight given what I saw in the MRI I’m not sure that medical management is going to work for Toby but we’re going to give that a try first and see what happens 24 hours after surgery to fix
His broken hip Constantino is ready to go home okay here he is teeny peenie hi how’s your mommy hi I ended up getting like a large dog crate for him so yeah so and then and then we also removed all of the furniture out of our room very good she calmed down and
Really kind of pulled her emotions together and made Constantino the priority I was really proud of her tiny are you ready to go home I think he’s excited to see you thank you so much I appreciate it keep us posted and I’ll see you in two weeks okay I definitely
Am looking forward to taking him home I’m excited to have him back and I’m relieved that he’s going to get better so I’m I’m I’m obviously in a much better state of Position gandal the angora rabbit has had six hyperbaric oxygen therapy sessions along with antibiotics to treat his infected eye I think it’s gone down like his eye seems less bulged for sure gandf owners are really hoping to see results with these treatments so that they can get him back home soon yeah
He’s opening it and closing it yeah which is good because the swelling is going down hopefully that means the absess is responding to our antibiotics um it’s still going to be a long road though because most abscesses take months to go away and it’s just going to
Be up to the owners to continue with those antibiotics and make sure that his progress is continuing in the right path everybody who’s looked at so far looks like a difference so it’s almost even with the top of his skull again he’s like 200% better than when we
Brought him in he couldn’t even blink his eye and now he’s blinking and running around and acting pretty normal so we’re hoping that this will be the end of it you get to go home finally bye guys thanks again Bye Toby the 10-year-old maltes who has a herniated disc in his back spent the night under medication in the hope that his paralyzed back legs would improve without surgery I recommended that we keep Toby overnight for observation the following day we didn’t see him moving his legs at all we weren’t seeing him
Wag his tail like he did when he first came in he looked weaker what are you doing huh you know he still had a chance with medical management but in my gut I thought his only real chance at recovery was with surgery with his condition worsening just relax baby Toby is
Quickly prepped for surgery to remove the disc material pushing against his spine I’m going to do what’s called a hemil laminectomy all right cutting it’s making a window into the side of the bone and once we make that window it’s going to give us some breathing room so
That we can get the herniated disc material from pushing on the spinal cord this is the space over the disc this is the beginning of where we’re going to do our window into the Bone and we try to remove part of the bone using these rour and then we’ll drill the rest of the bone down make a little window right here Dr Vasquez drills down through the spinal column I’m just very gradually peeling the bone off see what we got I can feel the
Disc he is just stuck I can feel the disc but it’s really stuck like it doesn’t want to come out so I’m just trying to gently probe to get the disc out but it’s stuck to the spinal cord I got to be real careful it’s just really hard like it
Doesn’t want to come out I have to be careful how much I touch a spinal cord cuz we’re in now territory where our surgery could make him worse you don’t want to over manipulate it for fear of causing permanent Paralysis I can feel the disc Dr Laura Vasquez is operating on Toby the mtis to remove a herniated disc and hits an unexpected roadblock I can feel the disc but it’s really stuck like it doesn’t want to come out I have to be careful how much I
Touch a spinal cord which is putting the 10-year-old at risk of paralysis and the more I try to tug on it the more worried I am that I’m going to hurt the spinal cord working around the spinal cord and the nerve roots and the Brain these are
Very delicate tissues that don’t have as much healing properties as say your skin or your bones can you see if Dr joov Vanella is at a point where she could pop her head in for me to talk to about this case I am really thankful and grateful to work
With a great group of other Specialists hey so it’s like I can’t even try to peel it off the spinal cord I’ve worked with Dr Joe vanilla for the past six years and we just bounce cases off each other and sometimes we say hey can you
Scrub in and and look at the surgery with me and so I am of the opinion that four neurologist eyes are better than two sometimes it’s there it’s just sticking together they try to carefully remove the disc material without disrupting the spinal cord there’s I nerve yeah oh yeah there you
Go a oh there it Is you hiding in there man Dr J does mess around around she gets spanking it was a great feeling when I finally felt that that give where it finally separated from the spinal cord and then it started to slowly piece by piece come out from the canal there’s a piece of it
Thank you no problem team effort team go team nuro it’s s such a relief to say okay we did what we set out to do and we’re going to give him the best chance and now we just got to see how he does postoperatively raisin the pointer mix is suffering from
A broken leg that has become severely infected Dr Whitney can’t fix the break until they get rid of the infection eyb this it doesn’t smell anymore the other thing that is concerning is you know this wound is already 10 days old at the time we started medical treatment so the
Infection has a big giant head start on us if we go in and put implants in right now the odds of them getting infected is way too high you can’t just go straight to surgery in that infected environment all of that blood supply is critical to the Bone healing in the endgame so
Before I can do definitive surgery to repair raisin broken bone all right give me a 20 nylon please I must first go deep within the wound and remove every bit of infected tissue mainly we’re looking for like anything that doesn’t have a blood supply like little foreign
Pieces of hair pieces of bone sitting in here would just be a headquarters for infection so we want to try to get all of that stuff out that we can after we’ve removed all of the infected tissue that we can see with our eyes we’re going to install a wound VAC to remove
Any infection that we can’t see all right we got the bone covered a wound back system provides continuous negative pressure through a special type of sponge that not only keeps the material evacuated from the wound but it also promotes it to heal and that really help get the tissues ready for the actual
Surgical procedure the wound VAC will continuously clean raisins leg for the next 4 days a local Big Cat Rescue organization has an emergency an African serval named Zuri whose owner gave her up after she got sick and stopped eating zri is a 2 2 and 1 half-year-old female Spade African
Serval uh she came to Tiger Creek as a surrender she had been diagnosed with pancreatitis and her previous owner was having trouble getting medications on board okay so how do you think she’s doing honestly she hasn’t eaten and she hasn’t had anything to drink when she was first diagnosed uh her previous
Owner he was able to get food into her and then I guess over the last course of the last week things have started to progress to the point where her main reaction to anybody saying hi to her is just to curl back up under her blanket pretend you aren’t there okay okay Zuri
Has pancreatitis and it’s making her feel pretty crummy right now so she doesn’t want to eat they can die from pancreatitis but if you get them onto the right medications then they often times can recover from it hi sweetie sweetheart do you not feel so hot when
She stopped eating he couldn’t get her to take her medication and so it’s a pretty bad combination you know how cats are they don’t like to be forced to do anything they don’t want to do so we’re thinking of a a feeding tube which would
Make it where you can give her not only food but also medications to see if we can at least get her meds into her CU obviously the meds were helping her but um but if she won’t eat you can’t get the meds into her so we’re going to help
The owners Along by putting in a a esophagostomy tube so they can actually get some nutrition into her as well as administer meds and hopefully it helps make her start feeling better okay so I have sedatives if I can just like give her a quick butt poking perfect good job good job kitty
Kitty Zuri’s condition has deteriorated pretty significantly at this point all right sleepy one you ready her organs are just going to continue to shut down if we can’t get that nutrition into her and can’t get the medication that she needs delivered into her system Zuri situation is critical the only option to
Save her life will be inserting a feeding tube look how long our neck is so beautiful Zuri the Cal with pancreatitis is getting a feeding tube what’s the temperature 1025 without the nutrition and medication it will deliver Zuri will starve to death she has not eaten well
For a couple of weeks which in a cat is a big deal so what we’re going to do is place an esophagostomy tube down into the stomach so that we can bypass the mouth and the whole wanting to eat thing and just get much needed nutrition into
This cat are you guys going to wait for the blood to run before hottinger does this or just do it no just have just do it for Zuri we decided to bring in Dr Heidi hottinger one of our soft tissue Specialists this is something that Dr hottinger does in cats very regularly
Very routinely and so while Zuri’s a little larger version of of what Dr hinger is used to doing here it’s still the same anatomy and so having someone who’s done this a million times in our corner is really important Dr hinger how come you don’t have your big cat hat oh
You’re I should have put that on there are a lot of things coming into play with this cat because it’s she’s not a house cat she’s a wild animal the feeding tube will allow her to receive nutrition as well as medication for her pancreatitis okay we’re good it’s in her
Tummy the nice thing about the feeding tubes that we use is that we choose feeding systems that do allow the patients to start eating on their own when they have that stimulus and that’s very important it’s good because once she starts eating and is eating well on her own she’s maintaining her hydration
Status then we can pull it at any point as well okay honey feel bad okay if the feeding tube is successful Zuri will get her appetite back and start eating on her Own with the feeding tube we’ll be able to to medicate her and feed her and get her body stronger and healthier and happier but she’s still a very wild animal and afraid of us so there are a lot of challenges Associated to put it back on just oh oh Jee she
Okay can you put something over her eyes you know this is an animal that has like a 10ft vertical jump and they are super super strong we want this to be as smooth and easy for her as possible we don’t want it to be traumatic and stressful and we’re not trying to hurt
Her we just need to get the nutrition into this cat so now I’m just giving her her medications delicious yes there you go so this is not a long long-term solution but it’s also not just a Band-Aid we have to let her body get to a point where it feels well enough to
Eat and it’s done and once she starts eating on her own in in a volume that is um you know sufficient for for her to maintain her weight um and gain weight then we can pull that feeding tube here’s your friend hello she’s all set she’s umf a little worked up at the
Moment I don’t know she just you know is scared it’s going to be little bit on pins and needles here for the first few days we’re going to bend over backwards and uh climb up any mountain we have to in order to make sure that Zuri is taken care of
Properly let’s go home Zuri I once wound up with an orthopedic pin in my right ass cheek true story came out of a bird’s leg and wound up in my butt cheek um I mean it was like stuck in there and there was like scabby bird
Skin and stuff on it and then it was in my butt yeah I know I was like oh my God it hurt like a still don’t know how it happened I think someone set me up 16 days since he was viciously attacked raisins infection is finally under control and he’s ready for surgery
To fix the badly broken bones in his leg well it looks better than I thought it was going to look I think we’re going to be able to move this over leave this and then tea plate here the surgery will be difficult the location of the break
Leaves Dr Whitney very little bone to attach a plate to I’m going to take a sip of water and say a few hel Maries and I’ll be right there let’s just kind of look at it before we decide how we’re going to proceed don’t like looks to
That Dr Whitney opens the leg and gets his first clear look at the bone break but the leg damage is far more extensive than he anticipated it’s so fibrotic and Scar nothing is you know kind of in its natural place raisins bones and tissues have begun to heal and fuse together
Incorrectly on their own and are now surrounded by hardened Scar Tissue yeah everything is stuck to everything how that’s just adhered scarred down Dr Whitney disects the scar tissue that is congesting raisin leg in order to line up the edges of the bone so it can heal
Correctly all right so if we’re not careful we’re going to break this I knew that if I wasn’t pretty meticulous I was going to damage more soft tissue that I wanted I think we’re going to probably go back about 2 and 1/2 cm and cut this off I was trying to justest
Room move enough to get the job done but uh it just uh it went on and on and on and on what I want to do is get a pin down the Elma that’ll give us a little bit of additional stability bulletproof bulletproof scar tissue come on
Way raisin is several hours into surgery to reconstruct his badly broken leg oh my gosh just hard bone and I’m weak muscles we’re almost there kind of for 2 hours Dr Whitney fights through the hardened scar tissue to get a stabilizing pin through the bone but
There’s one more step I think I’m G to put this plate on and I’m gonna have to use the plate to fight the scar fight the scar like shove it under the scar basically am I crazy the first time I tried to pull the bone back into alignment it was like
Fighting the strongest rubber band you’ve ever seen so I I thought well I may be crazy for even trying to think that I can get it pulled over but with Dr murkin’s help we were able to just work it over and luckily we got it back into
Line the metal plate is put in place is tough and after five long hours raisins fracture is finally mended oh gosh my neck is just like Frozen and this is brutal isn’t it very happy with plate placement it’s going to be important that we monitor him for weeks we can’t have any residual
Bacteria in that wound that sets up shop around that metal plate or the screws because if it does then it’s going to require plate removal I’m I’m happy with this yeah just when you think you’re out of the woods it can go bad all right two weeks after surgery hey buddy
You want to go see Dad come on raisin is doing something he hasn’t been able to do in over a month walk on all four of his legs it’s obvious that raisin attitude and Spirits are remarkably improved he’s happy he’s ready to go home and I know
His owner is ready to get him home that was Raising what you doing buddy oh you can walk again oh my goodness he’s a good boy he was a he was a very good patient he was very very brave oh no you weren’t going to be able to walk anymore
And now look at you you’re going to be running well he wouldn’t have been alive had he not come down here but he’s a happy dog he’s my buddy raisen will need to return for periodic checkups to make sure his bone heals correctly but his newly playful attitude shows he’s on the
Fast track to recovery I’m very happy for him and for Steve come on Toby the 10-year-old maltes had back surgery to remove a herniated disc in his spinal cord that left him unable to use his back legs so today Toby’s going home after being in the hospital for about 5 days post
Surgery still can’t walk all the way but he’s definitely a lot better than he was before surgery so he’s walking pretty well on that right leg now he’s just got to heal he’s just got to have time and Rehab to heal you know your mom is here go Toby
Go oh my goodness look at you this is so good yeah he does better with when floor with traction but he’s really moving that right leg oh well he’s going to get better every day can I hold him yeah you can hold him okay he’s not 100% by any
Means but we’re on the path to recovery now he’s going to get there he’s going to take a little time this is I’m I I mean this has been such Improvement that it just it’s really exciting I know some people might just look him as like a pet
But they’re more they’re more than that for sure it’s just a blessing about 2 or 3 days after he went home they sent me this video of him walking on three legs I couldn’t believe from when he left to just two or 3 days later the Improvement
At home all right you know it makes me feel good that I was able to at least you know try to give him some quality of life for however much longer he has with Macy Toby 6 weeks after undergoing surgery Zuri the African Servo with digestive problems is also making progress thanks to her newly installed feeding tube she’s getting nutrition and medicine and has started eating on her own her pancreas is healing and she should have her feeding tube removed Soon
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Video “Animal ER: Down the Rabbit Hole (Full Episode) | Nat Geo Wild” was uploaded on 03/25/2024 to Youtube Channel Nat Geo WILD