Poppy, a much loved cat, went missing in the Derby area for weeks over the summer of 2013. It is a mystery how she survived with severely displaced and comminuted (fragmented) fractures of the humerus of her upper right forelimb and the femur of her upper left hind limb. She was, almost incredibly, managing to walk on her two remaining legs.
At a guess it had been 5-6 weeks since these fractures were sustained and God only knows how she had survived in the meantime. Major nerves were adhered to both fractures and needed dissecting off the fragments before they were pinned and plated.
The right humerus healed extremely well and she was walking normally on it within a few days. The left femur is aligned and very functional but some gait abnormality remains a few weeks post-op. This probably in part reflects muscle adhesions, fibrosis and contracture that developed in the weeks between trauma and fixation, because of the massive chronic displacement of the fragments.
16th November 2013
