• Collapsed lung from broken ribs (plus a fractured sacrum and pelvis) after being hit by a freight train!

Harvey must have ached in places he didn’t even know he had – this dog just could not find a comfortable way to lie, and yet he could not have been an easier patient here at West Midlands Referrals. He showed not one glimpse of aggression at any point.

His broken ribs and collapsed lung led to him blowing up like the Michelin man. The broken ribs will have punctured lung tissue so that air spilled out, into the chest cavity, through the tears in the muscle between his broken ribs, and out under his skin. This “inflated” him, as far back as his knees. He needed a chest drain to manage the collapsed lung while the lung tissue healed over. Once the source of the air “spillage” resolved, he gradually went down like a deflating balloon!

Once he was stable we were able to fix his pelvis and sacrum with locking plates. He was “knuckly” on his right hind limb for a few weeks after that because of the battering received by the nerves running around his pelvis and sacrum. But at a re-x-ray a few weeks later, you’d have struggled to know that there had ever been anything wrong with him! His pelvis was a little narrowed as a result of the injuries, but there is enough space for him to defecate without issues, and we don’t anticipate that this will be a problem in the future.

Harvey is remembered on a daily basis at the clinic in Burton-Upon-Trent as the owners kindly gave Jon a commemorative mug! This pleased our nurses no end as it meant that he now had no excuse to use anyone else's…

Happy days …!

22nd July 2014

3535.135.2

35.435.6