Once the rumen was mostly sewn up, we inserted a trocar. Then we sewed up the skin around the trocar, with Erin’s idea of a line from the rumen to the outside to help hold tension on it. Once everything was sewn up it was time to get things moving again.
The trocar gives us a direct line to her stomach. Even if she doesn’t want to eat, we can put food in directly. With her rumen all freshly sewn up, we don’t want much in there but we needed something to get the flora and fauna working again. First we put in some ProBios. It’s a paste of gut biotics that I keep around for weird things like this.
Then we put in some Gatorade, about three bottles worth. This gives her electrolytes and carbs, both of which she needed desperately. Then we gave her about 90cc of yogurt. Carolina Farmhouse Dairy yogurt, actually. We had a big jar of plain. Yogurt is good for your gut, why not hers? Then I washed everything down with a last bottle of Gatorade.
I also administered a dosage of Flunixamine(Banamine), and a dosage of LA-200 antibiotic.
Once all that was done, we walked our patient into the hospital barn. We made sure she had a bit of feed should she feel inclined, that she had fresh water, and then left her to rest. Erin checked on her at about 8pm and said she had a lot of gut sound (the sound of digestion, hopefully) and that she was resting nicely.
I was back at 1am to check on her and to put two more bottles of Gatorade into her via the trocar. As of 1:30 she was still resting comfortably. Since I was already up, I figured I’d document what we’d done so the farmer can get an update when she wakes up. It’s now 3am, so I think I’ll catch a few ZZs if I can before the day starts anew tomorrow.
At this point she may already have been dying and we can’t get her restarted. Her liver numbers apparently were not good per the vet which is a sign she’s starting to shut down. Or she may have lost too much body condition and she may not make it. Or she may die of thirst because she’d stopped drinking and we can’t get enough Gatorade into her. Or the fact I was elbow deep in her may cause an infection that will kill her. There are a lot of reasons why she won’t make it so I’m not buying candles for her birthday cake yet. But at least we have done all we could for her. Otherwise she would have just died. Now at least, there is hope.