Broken leg advise

I have a 1 year old Siamese cat that has broken his radius bone near the
foot. How long should I keep him from running and jumping. He's a real
wild child and has been contained for 5 weeks. The vet took his splint off
at 3 weeks because his leg skin was very raw and irritated. At three weeks
the x-ray showed it was healing and straight but when do you consider it
healed? He favors it when he walks, and I don't let him run or jump

in article , hamop78 at
wrote on 11/16/04 5:03 PM:

I have a 1 year old Siamese cat that has broken his radius bone near the
foot. How long should I keep him from running and jumping. He's a real
wild child and has been contained for 5 weeks. The vet took his splint off
at 3 weeks because his leg skin was very raw and irritated. At three weeks
the x-ray showed it was healing and straight but when do you consider it
healed? He favors it when he walks, and I don't let him run or jump


Seems to me the usual timing is 6 to 8 weeks. Didn't the vet give you an
estimate?

When Squirt had the splint and bandage, there were a few times that his leg
needed fresh air due to moisure and surgical site irritation under the
bandage. The theme here is once the splint and bandage was taken off to
allow airing, I was told to bring him back in the next day (memory fails me,
it might have been three days) for reassessment and for putting the splint &
bandage on again depending on the skin condition. In Squirt's final
recovery, upon removal of the splint, the vet put only a bandage on his leg
to allow for a bit of support for his leg as he began putting more pressure
on it without the inhibiting splint. This bandage was on for another week.
I supsect the three-day bit for airing and suggest you call your vet to see
if this is what he had in mind. The hard part for me for the three days was
to keep him from jumping ... but, it wasn't too much of a worry since he
would apply a little pressure on it and immediately put his leg up next to
his belly and jumped with his three legs. However, the roughest part was
regarding the stitches after the metal support stints/pins were surgically
removed from inside his leg and keeping him from gnawing it off ... I did
have to use the Eliz collar for this, but only when I had to. Realize,
though, Squirt's bit was about four-five months of leg bandages due to the
extensive amount of injury he had in that leg. I would call your vet to
find out for sure since he may need that one week with a bandage to ensure
he makes the transition from the splint to none at all ... to avoid a
potential setback.