I know nothing about hematoma. Have had cats with ear problems, I get the stuff at Petsmart or the stuff at the health food store and do regular ear cleaning. I like Golden Seal, so use the one with Golden Seal in it a lot!
Gloria
At 06:32 AM 7/29/2003 -0700, you wrote:
Dear Friends,
Thanks so much for your good thoughts and prayers for Wink; she did just fine at the vet and is now on oral antibiotics. She had a bout like this about 3-4 years ago. I honestly think her flareup is because I have been giving them tap water. About 3 weeks ago I heard something about refilling plastic water jugs (did anyone else hear this?) and that they aren't meant to be reused and that chemicals can leach out of the plastic. So, I stopped my trips to the local spring for their water and called about home delivery of spring water, got busy at work and never followed up. I have everybody on distilled water right now for a week or two to clean them out.
Now, on to Wayne. When he showed up a couple of years ago he had an ear infection so bad that you could smell it. It took a long time to clear up and although the ear didn't crumple, it's always sort of pointed to the side rather than stood straight up. He develped a small hematoma last week and I opted to wait and let it resolve on it's own; there is nothing much in the ear, a little wax; I think he is just very sensitive.
Now, fast-forward to second-guess street....Wink has two crumpled ears. She had two hematomas and my longtime vet recommended I just let them resolve on their own since there wasn't much difference to how the ear would look after surgery. Well, Wink is a tiny little thing and her ears are now extremely difficult to clean because of all the scar tissue. Creamsicle had big old Dumbo ears and after the experience with Wink, I opted to do the surgery on him when he developed a hematoma. His ear looks a little nicer than Wink's, but it was so large to begin with that I don't think cleaning would have been an issue either way.
So, Wayne is going in tonight because he is not absorbing the hematoma and there may be a large clot that needs to be removed.
I don't like to do any surgery if it's not necessary, though. Wayne is a big (reformed!) tomcat and I honestly don't care how he looks; a crooked ear is no big deal to me, as long as he's comfortable.
So, I've done it both ways: had the surgery and not had the surgery and I'm not seeing a whole lot of difference. Once again, if anybody's been through this and wants to share thoughts/experiences, I'd really appreciate it.
Love, Julie
"I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is
to protection by man from the cruelty of man. "
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged
by the way its animals are treated."
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)
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