I’m happy to report that our patient is doing very well. He’s taking his meds without too much cajoling, leaving his bandage on, and even playing with his caregivers. This last procedure doesn’t seem to have phased him much at all. It may even feel like a relief.
Typically, chimps in recovery require lots of distraction techniques to keep them from removing bandages and picking at their sutures. You can’t just stick a cone on a chimpanzee, so instead we stick random pieces of surgical tape all over their bodies and occasionally add “distraction sutures”, which are shallow absorbable sutures that the chimps can focus on without causing any harm to the actual incision. Overwhelm them with things to pick at and just maybe they won’t pick at the one that matters. At least not right away.
But none of this was necessary, because we woke up to a couple inches of snow this morning and it’s all Burrito can think about. Snow balls. Buckets of snow. Snow drizzled with juice. I don’t remember him being this crazy for snow in winters past, but it is a welcome distraction right now.
