#pyometra

[iheartvmt]

Another day another pyometra

We took her to emergency surgery, and she did great.

Spay your pets!

[animals-why]

Someone I follow who has Opinions about spay/neutering [along the lines of: how dare you deprive them of an organ they need!!] just had a dog go through pyometra and then an incision dehiscence.

I want to shake her so badly and go "HAVE YOU LEARNED YOUR LESSON???"

(I'm not sure the answer would be yes, even though she is a decently smart person! Argh!)

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Hi! I’m currently working on a big, detailed Blackfish rebuttal, which means lots of rabbit holes. I recently started rereading John Hargrove’s book (ugh). He talks about how the original Shamu died of pyometra and septicemia, claiming that it was something that, apparently, would almost never happen in the wild. The obvious implication here is that captivity caused these conditions, and/or that such is common with captive orcas. However, obviously septicemia can be caused by a variety of things, wild or not. As for pyometra, he doesn’t provide other examples of captive orcas suffering pyometra, nor have I been able to find other examples described in peer reviewed literature. It seems that that isn’t particularly common in cetaceans period, whether they’re wild or not, but I’m also not a marine mammal veterinarian. Since you’d know better about cetacean medicine, I was wondering if you knew anything more about this.

Ooh, that'll be interesting! I'd love to read it!

You're correct that Shamu is the only reported case of pyometra in a killer whale, wild or captive. The CRC Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine makes no mention of pyometra in cetaceans, although it does occur in both wild and captive pinnipeds and has been reported in sea otters and sirenians. Pyometra is typically the result of bacteria migrating up the vaginal tract into the uterus, which at certain times is more susceptible to infection due to normal hormonal fluctuations. Theoretically, anything with a uterus can get pyometra, though some species are more commonly affected than others.

I would hedge to bet that pyometra is rare in cetaceans because of their truly unusual reproductive anatomy. Females have a lot of redundant tissue in their vaginal tract, creating "false cervixes" and overall making it a lot more difficult for anything to reach the uterus.

See all those extra recesses around the cervix?

I did find this case report on a necropsy of a wild short-beaked common dolphin. Pyometra was one of many nasty issues afflicting the poor girl, so it can indeed occur in nature. Since this individual was suffering from co-infections of bacteria and cetacean morbillivirus, she was clearly immunocompromised. It's highly likely Shamu was as well.

Overall, pyometra of cetaceans (including orcas) appears to be quite rare in both the wild and managed care. Shamu was the very first orca intentionally captured for public display, nearly 60 years ago, and only survived six years in captivity before her death at approximately age 10. Virtually nothing was known about killer whale husbandry at the time, so it's not at all unreasonable to assume that poor husbandry, nutrition, and stress negatively impacted her immune function to the point she succumbed to pyometra.

However, it's a weak argument on Hargrove's part to compare the SeaWorld of today (with multiple orcas now in their 30s, 40s, and 50s) to the SeaWorld of the 1960s, and their very first whale at that. Especially using a condition that has not been reported in a captive orca since.

[bonefall]

seeing all the neurodivergence/disability stuff in your inbox and it brought up a part of my (and @syrnaxi’s) rewrite:

Bluestar/yellowfang bond over autistic/adhd solidarity

how do you handle the silverstream “death in childbirth” thing? So far, we’ve been waffling back and forth between “this should happen a lot more” or “silverstream should have a reproductive disability- we’ve decided on endometriosis, something we both have personal experience with. Anyway, I’d love your input on how this could be handled, as well as what general medical care for reproductive issues would look like!!

Thanks!

People are starved for good Neurodivergence/Disability representation and I humbly provide

Blue and Yellow

I won't be doing very much with Bluestar/Yellowfang's possible bond because I find that TPB is already super packed, and Bonefall TPB in particular is extremely politically focused as the basis for what Thistle Law, Traditionalism, and Fire Alone look like in practice. There just isn't room in the story that I'm telling for Blue and Yellow to also get focus as a unit.

I do find them super compelling in the fandom, though. I think the way that, combined, they lost a full litter of kits (Blue lost 1 and Yellow lost 2) is an unexplored concept. Not to mention their complicated feelings towards StarClan, with Yellowfang accepting that she 'deserves' punishment where Bluestar scorns the stars completely.

(CW past this point: I'm talking about Silverstream's death in childbirth, cat reproduction, infection, and also I start ranting about how much human reproduction sucks)

Silverstream

Again since TPB is SO packed it's hard to work in the same kind of disability/neurodivergence exploration I'm so dedicated to for the arcs past TNP

It does make sense to me though that Silverstream's lineage has a medical history of birth complications. I know her mom died of Greencough but it always made more sense to me that it was death by childbirth tbh.

I generally try to avoid talking about reproductive issues the same way I try to avoid talking about surgery and alcohol without massive tagging here and back, but with reproductive issues, I'd also have to get into how fundamentally different cats are to humans with the way we reproduce... which includes cat heat

Humans are one of the very few mammals that are fertile year-round and renew the nutrients in our wombs monthly. Humans are a horror house of animal reproduction.

Replacing these nutrients monthly to the point where it's good growing ground for ONE OF THE MOST INTENSIVE INFANTS IN THE ENTIRE ANIMAL KINGDOM is disgustingly wasteful

Because this gross slop is growing every month, it's like there's a thousand more chances for SOMETHING to go wrong. It's like russian roulette with meat

OUR. PELVISES. SUCK. We made a hasty transition from ape to featherless biped and that meant that the Bone Cradle where we supposed to gestate something that is the size of a melon suddenly also had to BEAR ALL OF OUR WEIGHT AT THE SAME TIME.

Cats are NOT this bad in terms of childbirth. Yeah sure there's complications here and there, but those complications mostly affect the kittens, not the mother. Most uterus problems in cats have to do with mollies that have had a lot of heat cycles and never had kittens.

Heat cycles have their own completely unique set of biological problems though- the cat equivalent of endometriosis would be frequent development of pyometra, because the hormones associated with heat cycles cause the suppression of the immune system. So infections happen OFTEN in the WORST possible way

These are both pretty bad, so personally I just... try not to think about it too much for the rewrite. I take the best of both worlds-- their childbirth isn't as bad and dangerous as a human's, and also they don't get pyometra much.

If you want treatment plans for reproductive issues though, I'd recommend looking over at my HRT guide. The antigonadotropins (rosemary, wolf's foot) I mention there can be used for cats who have reproductive issues to prevent as much thickening of the uterus and generally limit the causes of both Endometriosis and Pyometra; bad hormones.

[vetstudentnl]

Little hedgehog with a pyometra!

[millythechisurgery]

12/17/2021

update on milly! we took her to a vet today and we were told that the total cost of her surgery will be $2,000+ so we have taken out a loan because we do not have $2,000 at the moment, and milly needs to have her surgery done ASAP or else her uterus will rupture and that will kill her. so all donations and shares would be very much appreciated! it would help us immensely to pay off the debt we owe. my family and I are victims of poverty so we have always struggled a lot financially and this debt isn’t any help

Help milly get surgery, organized by Vivian Diaz

Hello. My name is vivian and I have a senior dog who urgently needs surgery. She has pyometra which… Vivian Diaz needs your support for Help

[certifiedveterinarynurse]

I’ve made short notes on Pyometra’s so I’m able to refresh my memory on the topic🐾

[drferox]

Heya! :) I have a question for you about pyometra. My chinchilla had to be spayed recently because she had a pyo that was large enough to cause gut stasis. (Luckily, she pulled through. She's an elderly chinchilla with a heart murmur, so the vet was a tidge worried.) Do dogs run the risk of gut stasis if their pyo gets too big or is that just a small animal thing?

‘Small animal’ in the context of veterinary medicine means basically anything smaller than a human, and almost always means dogs and cats in particular.

While an equivalent of gut stasis can happen in small carnivores like dogs and cats (ileus) it’s not really the same diabolical life threatening condition as you would see in a small hindgut fermenter like a rabbit or a chincilla. And I should mention thT as an Australian I’m only familiar with Chinchillas in passing, they’re not kept as pets down here.

Just about any sort of malady causing reduced appetite can set off gut stasis in a hindgut fermenter, it’s a fairly generic response. In dogs a pyo will prevent them from eating either because of its sheer size taking up space in the abdomen, or the sickness felt with going septic or developing peritonitis on the way towards dying.