Abscess in Absentia

My Sister and Bro-in-Law have just returned to their home in the sunny south of France, after a few days sojourn with us in La France Profonde. I like it when people visit – it reminds me of all the things that are lovely about our current life. But somehow, the unlovely things are always so much more interesting to write about. Let’s take Valentine’s neck, for example…

You may recall that about three weeks ago we had the vet out to deal with a whopping great abscess that Valentine had sprouted just behind his jaw line. We thought the vet’s draining of two syringe-loads of pus was pretty gross, but that turned out to be nothing in comparison with the grossness that followed.

Over the following four days, Simon duly administered the two massive syringe-fulls of antibiotic that the vet had left in his capable (and only slightly shaking) hands – which was no mean feat, given Valentine’s newly developed unwillingness to be lured into the catch pen, the unbelievable impenetrable thickness of the skin on his neck, and Simon’s considerable aversion to all things needley. But during the second of these valiant procedures, we noticed white liquid oozing from a small hole near the top of the abscess. For one wild moment, Simon thought he had managed to inject the antibiotic straight up through a tube in Valentine’s neck and out of the hole at the top. A quick reflection on the probable anatomical arrangements of the inside of a llama neck convinced him that this was in fact a highly unlikely explanation for the phenomenon unfolding before us. More likely was that the abscess was now oozing pus. But since the swelling around Valentine’s jaw line was subsiding, and he was moving his mouth more easily when he ate, we figured that, overall, things were probably on the up.

Over the next few days, the oozing of the pus continued. It not only continued – it gathered momentum. Soon there was a veritable flood of pus leaking out of Valentine’s neck, and down his face on to the ground as he grazed, and the hair on his face and neck became marbled brown with drying slime. But he was clearly in good spirits, eating greedily and bouncing around like only a happy llama can. He was obviously feeling much better and, assuming that pus is the sort of stuff that is better out than in, we decided to leave well alone, and leave nature to take its healing course.

So Simon went off happily on his twin-visiting trip to England, leaving me with instructions to ‘monitor things closely’, (which was fine by me, so long as he wasn’t expecting me to actually do anything). And while he was away, I did indeed monitor things closely, and what I noticed was that the size of the hole that was leaking the river of pus was gradually extending downwards to form a sort of slit around the circumference of the abscess. But the river seemed to be abating somewhat, and Valentine continued to bounce and generally demonstrate overall wellness, by mercilessly winding up Mad Lenny at the boundary fence, and stealing apples off his best mate Duc. So I continued my well-considered strategy of radical non-intervention, and monitored on.

But, the Law of Sod being what it is, on the day of Simon’s return, the pus-leaking slit had extended to around eighty percent of the circumference of the abscess, so that the dead skin covering it was now a large flap, hinged at the side. And of course Valentine, not being the most aware or careful of patients, was going about his usual business of endlessly sticking his curious nose into places where it shouldn’t be, and of course he caught his flappy flap on something, so that when I did my final close bit of monitoring just an hour before Simon’s predicted return, I discovered with a small shiver of horror, that the river of pus had been replaced by a river of blood.

Damn and Blast. What a poor animal-caretaker I am. What a terrible monitor-of-things-closely. What a shameful excuse for a llama farmer. What a letter-downer of all who have ever placed their trust in my failing hands. What a thoroughly bad person in every conceivable way! How could I possibly make up for this contemptible desertion of duty?

As I stared at the little llama-neck of horrors, three possible courses of action ran through my mind.
1. I could call the vet immediately. (Hmmm… my aversion to contact with unfamiliar people, and particularly with unfamiliar people who speak a different language, militated against this as a likely way forward).
2. I could pretend I hadn’t noticed, and wait for Simon to discover the horror for himself. (Oh My God – I can’t believe I could even think of such a thing. Oh wait – yes I can. Oh dear….).
3. I could wait another hour for Simon to get back, and tell him immediately, so that he could call the vet, and we could deal with it together.

I monitored Valentine’s neck even more closely. Okay. So there was apparently quite a lot of blood on his face – but actually it wasn’t really that much. And it was pretty much dried now. And although the thing looked hideous and vile, it really was just a big flap of dead skin, which would have to come off some time anyway. And Valentine didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered by it, and he clearly wasn’t in imminent danger of bleeding to death or anything dramatic like that. So, although the whole sorry mess needed something doing about it, it didn’t need to be done immediately. It wasn’t an emergency. It was pressing but it wasn’t really urgent.

So I returned to the house, and spent the remaining hour of guilt-ridden solitude vacuuming, and cleaning, and tidying, and generally trying to make it look like I hadn’t been a total loser and waster during Simon’s absence. And when I heard the Land Rover approaching down the lane, I encouraged the dogs to be ready with a cheery greeting, and I was ready with a welcoming hug-and-kiss, followed swiftly by the welcoming wallop of bad news. Poor Simon. Nine hours of travelling on trains and planes and automobiles, nicely rounded off with a llama-neck of blood and gore, and the pressure of another call to the vet.

I love the way he rises to a challenge. No time for niceties like a refreshing cup of tea for the weary traveller. Simon takes his animal-caring responsibilities seriously. Within minutes he has examined Valentine’s neck, looked up the French translations for ‘flap’, ‘skin’, ‘ unattached’ and ‘bleeding’, and called the vet to arrange a rendez-vous à domicile. The vet is out on her rounds now. The receptionist will contact her. She will be with us around 5.30 pm.

With the worst bit out of the way (the phone call), Simon relaxes a little, dropping from point 10 on the anxiety scale to a moderate 7. He has some tea. He unloads the car. He tells me all about his lovely twin grandsons. He tells me all about his less-than-lovely journey. We take the dogs for a walk, and Simon checks around to see what other awful things may have happened while he left the house, and land, and animals in my less-than-perfect-care. We tempt Valentine and Duc into the catch pen with some buckets of hard food, and Simon eventually manages to constrain Valentine in a corner long enough to get a halter on him. He tells me that Valentine’s neck smells of rotting meat. Lovely.

And then we wait. At 6.15 pm the vet arrives, and it is a different vet to the one who visited before, so Simon has to explain the patient’s history all over again. The vet gets into the catch pen and studies Valentine’s neck, whilst Simon holds him still. Valentine is not happy. It isn’t that he is in pain. It is simply that he is a llama, and he really does not like to be touched by strangers. All his instincts are telling him to run, but Simon is telling him to stay put and not worry. His eyes get wider. His nostrils flare. His breathing gets faster. It is as much as he can do to carry on eating the food I offer him from my hand. Actually, not all of his instincts are telling him to run. One of them is telling him to eat as much of this stuff as he can, before Duc gets any of it.

The vet flaps the vile-smelling, pus-matted flap back and forth. “La peau est morte,” she declares. She goes back to her car and returns with a disposable scalpel, another syringe full of antibiotic liquid, and a bottle of evil-looking brown cleaning stuff. Simon keeps Valentine’s smelly head still, while the vet neatly slices off the stinking dead flap of skin, which is the size of a small drinks coaster, and tosses it unceremoniously on to the ground. I imagine cats appearing from the shadows to run off with this unusual tasty new meal, and make a mental note to find it and pick it up when the vet has gone.

With the obscuring dead flap out of the way, we can all see the full loveliness of the festering putrescence that is exposed. A gaping crater of lumpy reddish brown, speckled with greyish white, surrounding a finger-sized hole, out of which creamy pus is dribbling. As Valentine chews, the hole in the middle of the crater pulses in and out. The vet applies some of the cleaning fluid to the mess on a piece of dressing, and thoroughly cleans the whole area, poking her gloved finger into the pulsating hole. The reddish meat of the wound turns grey, like cooked mince, as the evil cleaning fluid cauterizes it.

And just when poor Valentine thought it was all over, the vet jabs the huge needle of the syringe into his neck and injects him with another bucket-load of antibiotics (which, incidentally, doesn’t come out of the hole in the middle of the crater).

At last it really is all over. The vet leaves us with a syringe full of the evil brown cleaning fluid, and instructions to clean the vileness thoroughly once a day and to contact her if Valentine shows any signs of deteriorating health, such as loss of appetite or lethargy. And she gives us a prescription for some other stuff to promote the scarring over of the vileness, that we are supposed to spray on Valentine’s neck (oh, he’ll love that) once we are certain that there is no more pus to come out.

Now here we are, ten days later, and at last the pus has stopped flowing. The crater is beginning to smooth over, and the hair around Valentine’s face and neck is beginning to free itself of the scabby, leaky streakage. But he is oh-so-wary of offered treats, and has developed a level of suspiciousness that is unbecoming of such a formerly trusting llama. Quel dommage!

And Simon thinks we were remiss, and should have called the vet sooner. And he says it was a learning experience, and he will know better next time. And I think it wouldn’t have made any difference if the vet had come sooner, because once the abscess was there, it was going to do its gross and vile abscessy thing, come what may. And, after all is said and done, peau morte is peau morte, and that’s all there is to it.

But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?