Today a female mallard presented to the WRC after being found on the side of a road. It was suspected that she was hit by a car. She was very weak and wasn’t using either of her rear legs. She also had an open wound above her elbow on the outside of her left wing. The wound was cleaned, and a full physical exam performed. No limb fractures or dislocations were palpated. X-rays were taken and everything looked normal.

The reason she is unable to use either of her rear legs is likely due to spinal trauma. Oftentimes with severe trauma such as being hit by a car or grabbed by another animal, damage can be done to the nerves that pass out of the spinal cord. This causes weakness in the limbs, and can also lead to complete paralysis. It can take many weeks to months for animals to recover from spinal trauma.

This duck was placed on pain medications, antibiotics, and will receive subcutaneous fluids for the next few days for re-hydration. She will remain in our intensive care unit (ICU) to receive close monitoring. We hope to see her start to regain use of her legs within the next several days. It will be a long road to recovery for her, but we are hoping for the best!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Medical News, Vet Leslie's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.