Sam and the ER. Again.

Yeah. Three weeks and six days after we spent half a day in the ER with Sam's UTI.

I got home tonight about 9:30 or so. Less than 30 seconds after I got home, I started up the stairs, Sam started up after me and lost his footing. I have spiral stairs with horizontal metal bars on the back/vertical portion of each step. Sam slipped, and his left front foot slid under the bar on a step and got caught.


Oreo on the stairs. You can see the bars in this picture.

He screamed. Lots. I went back down, and grabbed him and moved his back end down a step, so his trapped leg straightened out. He pulled his foot free.

I worried about broken bones, especially because it was a few minutes before he'd put his foot down, and then he limped. But he didn't seem to be in pain when he put his weight down, and he let me handle the foot without complaint, so I thought we'd dodged a bullet.

The three of us went to the corner so everyone could pee and poop if they wanted, and I thought everything was well. We came back home, and I made Sam get on the sofa. I looked at his leg...and saw it. He'd torn his skin open on the top of his foot. It was a bit wide, and you could see a couple of exposed blood vessels.

So, off to the ER. He's got staples in it, and a bandage (with bright green vet wrap). The bandage comes off on Monday. The staples stay about 12 days. I'm supposed to take him to his own vet Monday. (I have to work on Monday. Depending on how Sam's doing, we might postpone the vet visit until my day off, Tuesday.) And we have a five-day dose of cephalexin (antibiotics).

The UTI issue hasn't completely cleared up. Sam took the last of his Cipro on Monday. The plan, then, was to keep him antibiotic-free for two weeks before we drew a urine sample for a culture. After five days off antibiotics, though, we'll have to refigure this plan since the boy is now on a new antibiotic. (I made sure the ER doctor knew this. It may be why she prescribed this particular antibiotic, which isn't one of the ones he's had lately.) Sam's vet might want to extend this round of cephalexin long enough to see if it will knock out the UTI. We'll see what the vet wants to try.


I had all sorts of unpleasant flashbacks, tonight. Shades of Oreo: mom just home from work, freak accident with an injured leg, a dog screaming in pain. And Oreo was 8 (Sam's age). And if you see my post here, you'll see what weird worries I've got about this boy. Now he hurts himself in a freak accident that he's managed to avoid for nearly six years. And the thought of what might have happened if he'd slipped like that when I wasn't home and he'd been trapped there for hours... I'm going to have a hard time going to work and leaving him running around the condo. I may have to rethink how I leave him loose. (He absolutely doesn't do crates.) Tomorrow and Monday, I may take him to work with me. I'd like to supervise him and make sure he's not messing with his leg. (I can muzzle him when I need to. In fact, he's wearing his muzzle now because he didn't want to stay on the sofa next to me. But he just walked over here and has started rubbing his muzzle against the sofa.) Tuesday is my day off, but by Wednesday I need to have a secure way to leave him at home...for Sam's safety and my own peace of mind.