[Dailydrool] Bad experience with tails and sebaceous cyst removal

[Menzie Chase fka Campbell]

:
Hey there, Dale.  OK, several years ago- like, 2008, maybe?- Hector
had a big sebaceous cyst on his tail.  We drained it once or twice,
but finally we decided, with the vet, that it had to come off.

Once the vet got it open, it was deeper than he thought, it had
actually sort of grown onto the sheath of fibrous tissue that
surrounds the bones of the tail/spine.  But he got it all out.
HOWEVER: as the vet said, there's not a ton of blood supply in the
tail.  And the post-surgical swellng and such impeded said blood
supply, and Hector's tail... began to rot.  Seriously  The incision
wouldn't heal, it became necrotic, and it began to be just a bigger
and bigger wound.  IT spread almost all the way around the
circumference of the tail.

We discussed amputation of the tail quite seriously.  But Hector - oh,
if only you'd known him! - he LOVED his tail.  It was very long, and
had long fluffy white tails at the end, and when he slept, he would
curl himself up in a ball,and fil-LIP the end of his tail over his
nose.  So we decided to try and keep it.

THus began a 3-month-long regimen of every-other-day bandage changes.
We would soak off the bandage and then soak the tail wound in a
solution of betadine and warm water.  How does one soak a basset tail,
you ask?  WEll, one gets a tall flower vase and pours the solution in
that.  THen one lays the basset on the edge of the bed, with the tail
hanging down over the end, and one's then-husband pets and talks to
the basset while mom soaks tails and changes bandages.  Then we
re-bandaged.  Every other day.

Hector was an excellent patient throughout all of this. He laid
patiently with his tail hanging off the bed for all these bandage
changes, although they had to hurt.  We had cold laser therapy done on
the wound area twice, and that seemed to finally kickstart the growth
of replacement blood vessels.  In the meantime, though, the necrosis
(sorry, gross, I know) had actually eaten through the fibrous sheath
surrounding the tail vetebra, and the tail had sort of just fallen in
half one day- broken in the middle, like a small tree limb (though
still attached, I hasten to add!).  After that, the vet put a steel
rod in alongside his tail.

After it stopped rotting, and started growing new blood vessels, then
we had to get new flesh to grow, to fill in the hole in his tissue.
The way the vet did this was, I thought, ingenious.  After each
bandage change, we would slather the wound with a mixture of betadine
and sugar.  Yes, white sugar.  The vet explained that the sugar acted
as an irritant, and would cause new flesh to form int he wound area,
much as an oyster turns a grain fo sand into a pearl.  And sure
enough,t hat's what happened.  Every day, a little bit more new, pink
flesh had filled in the wound area.

Eventually, by the end of the three months, the new growing flesh had
grown around the steel rod, holding the tail in its proper position,
and had grown all the hole mostly back in, and finally healed over
with new skin.  The tail looked almost normal thereafter, except for
one bald patch where the hair never grew back.  And he held it gaily
upright, and flipped the end of it over the end of his nose (though it
didn't curl quite as naturally as it once had), until he died in July
2012.

Anyway, my advice is, don't have it removed unless you really have to.
--

-- 
Menzie Chase
Save a Life - Don't Shop, ADOPT a pet
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