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SNAKE IN THE GRASS
by Steve Tasker BVSc, MRCVS

Jake came in to see us at the end of May with an extremely swollen front leg, following what we are presuming to be a bite from a snake.

The tissues of his leg were very swollen and he had a raging temperature. His leg was in such a bad way that he was to lose a large area of skin over his forearm due to damaged blood supply and the drastic effect of the toxic bite.
His treatment included anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics but to sort the leg out required a much more intensive approach. We initially applied specialist dressings to the wound, to prepare him for the surgery that was required to fix him.

A week later he underwent a long operation to reconstruct the skin over his leg, and a large splinted dressing was put on to keep his leg straight to allow the area to heal. We saw Jake twice a week to put on further special wound dressings, and finally on July 6th he was signed off. If you like gorey pictures then here are a few of his wound at various stages of the healing process!

 1) After the Operation                       2) During a Change of Dressing     3) After treatment