VOT sVent about vets.. help??

Good. Idiots. Well, their staff, anyway.

I wish I knew what to tell you. But I'm pissed for you, if that helps any. I'd be beyond furious in your place. I hope Max is doing alright. Prolly won't hurt him to wait until Weds to have the stitches out, but still. Grrrrrr.

Elizabeth (and Cash and Harry)

Medical personnel are increasingly using SuperGlue (methyl methacrylate) to close minor wounds, and vets use it to close spay incisions, so maybe that's it.

Great info......how do you soften it to remove the stitches???

Gill

Mel>

Nail polish remover works on SuperGlue, but I don't think I'd use it on an incision.

Lucille

If it is, it will peel away rather like sunburnt skin.

What vets use is a surgical glue - but that is used inside the incision to help hold it together a bit more than normal incision for less scarring when healing. Surgical glue is absorbed by the body during healing, as are 'silk' sutures.

Here, when male cats are neutered (and probably dogs, or at least the smaller ones), no sutures are used at all, only the surgical glue.

Sounds like what your vet used outside the incision was a 'surgical skin' (marketed to the general public by Band-Aid as Liquid Bandage

to help keep the incision area clean (therefore less risk of infection). This is probably peelable, as one poster suggested, but I would do a search on it before attempting it. Or just wait a few more days, as there is usually no harm to the patient in sutures stay in a few more days longer.

OK, thanks for the info. I can see about 4 real stitches, and he had a lot of bright yellow stuff on him when we picked him up. There is only a little of that left, but the area does feel really "hard".

We have used this vet for years, but I think we will change to one nearer to the house. Neither of us like him very well, but he has had two super junior partners over the years. They have both moved on to greener pastures ( particularly one, who is now a big animal vet).

Gill

Is the other junior partner available somewhere nearby?

That's how I found my current vet. He left the practice that I was taking my dogs to and when I got sick of their mistakes (they mixed up the lables on medicine for a 25lb Cocker and a 60lb Terv for one thing) and of never being recognized, I went and found him. When I was explaining to the receptionist that I was new to the practice but had seen this vet before, he stuck his head around the corner and said "I know you: you have a black cocker spaniel with a permanent problem. Wait,...oh, I remember, he's deaf." Good memory. And he takes good care of my Tervs and our cat.

Never stick with a vet you don't like or trust.

Elizabeth

And I praise to the highest heavens our neighborhood vet. Not only just

4 blocks away (easy to hand-carry the babies over), but even my super-skittish Divine Miss Em is totally relaxed in Dr. Katie's hands. She ordinarily doesn't like anyone but me touching her (or even seeing her).

Your description of the surgical glue sounds exactly like what the vet used on Puff when he was neutered. He was just 4 months old and weighed about 4 lbs. so his incision was approximately 1/2 inch. I did nothing and it just healed on it's own with no scar.

I have major problems with very thin and fragile skin on my arms and can't use regular bandages at all. When nothing else worked to stop something from bleeding, I used Liquid Bandage. I found that it just kind of wore off after a length of time. The last dregs of it did peel off like an onion, but I wouldn't advise pulling it off because it does adhere to the skin very tightly.

Lucille

Lucille

It falls off as the skin cells shed.

I have no idea if this is it or not, but I had internal absorbable sutures after my Cesarean sections, and I could feel them under the skin for months, but they eventually absorbed.

Well, we took Max, and got the stitches out. Jim says if I had let him, he would have done it the same way. They were so embarassed; apparently at noon Sat the vet decided he wouldn't open on Monday. The receptionist said that someone was coming in to have stitches out, but couldn't remember the name ( she is new).

Anyway, Max is fine, and I still think we will change to a nearby vet!

Gill