Duke came into the clinic in a very distressed state after being hit by car. He was completely unable to use his back legs and was in a lot of pain.  Treating the shock and helping with Duke's pain were Lisa Brisbane's first priorities when she saw him. Having given some fairly strong pain relief and placed Duke to on IV fluids to stabilise him she set about trying to find out what damage had been done by the car.

It was obvious very quickly that he could have some major fractures around his back end. When feeling his tail Lisa could feel the crunch broken bones and touching his back right leg was enough to make him yell in pain. The fact that he was able to feel his back legs though was good because spinal injuries are common in cases of major trauma. She decided that to a proper examination without pain he would need an anaesthetic. Anaesthetics in cases of major trauma are often difficult. For example, we know people with a broken pelvis can lose up to half their blood volume into the fracture site. That is like giving blood at the blood bank five times in a short space of time. In this case though Lisa needed to know what was going on completely to save Dukes life and he was in too much pain to examine conscious. It was worth the risk.

With an anaesthetic Lisa was able to take x-rays which showed some major fractures of the right pelvis and as she had suspected a fractured tail. Duke needed some fairly major orthopaedic surgery.

On the x-rays you can see that there are two major fractures on the right hand side of the pelvis. On this side on shot you can see the fracture extends between the two bottom X's. It was very large. The top X shows the broken tail.

The fractures extend between the three X's .On this one we can see the full extent of the fracture - basically the right side of the pelvis has been broken into three bits.These needed surgery because this is the area of the pelvis that transfers any forces that come up from the leg through to the spine. Without stabilising the fractures Duke would probably not walk again.

Lisa passed Duke onto Geoff fro the surgery because he has post graduate training in surgery and the next day Geoff operated on Duke to repair the fractures. You can see on the post of x-rays the plate and screws were used to close the breaks. The broken tail was left as  is because Geoff thought that the inflammation associated with surgery could cause complications. While there is no spinal cord in the tail itself there are a mass of nerves and if these nerves become inflamed the inflammation can travel up the spinal cord causing spinal problems. If this occured Duke wouldn't ever walk again.

We knew that Duke's recovery would be at least four weeks post-op. The first 10 days or we could do was to roll him from side to side to avoid bedsores and give good nursing care he was too weak and sore to stand up. At about two weeks post op we were able to have him stand for short periods supported by a towel. In the photo Regan and Kylie are getting to take some weight on his back legs. This helps him rebuild his muscles and teaches him how to walk again. It is a long process and the sessions can only last a few minutes before he is exhausted. We will keep you up-to-date on his progress.