Mona Uk

On January 30th we took Nico to the vet clinic in Cassà de la Selva. 

To Nico it seemed like he was just going on a ‘trip’ and he was delighted, but the reality of it was not as joyful. As you already know, Nico harmed himself during the first few months after his arrival at Mona and four of his five fingers presented very severe wounds. His index finger was inflammated on several occasion. The x-rays revealed that one of his phalange was dislocated. Right now we are trying to reduce the inflammation by giving him medicine and are trying to come up with the best solution to this situation. Thankfully, this whole ordeal doesn’t seem to be affecting Nico’s excitment as he continues living his normal life, as active and social as ever.

On November 30th, the Mona team took Nico to get his second MRI done. 
It has been a year since Nico had an MRI done for the first time and since we found out he was suffering from Chiari syndrome and syringomyelia. During his surgery last January, the surgeons eliminated the malformation that had provoked a brain herniation. In Nico’s case the syringomyelia, which is a cyst, wasn’t operated on, has it can resorb itself with time. We took Nico for his second and hopefully last MRI to make sure the cyst had disappeared.  The x-ray films will be sent to the neurosurgeons that operated on and we will soon receive the results.

Even if Nico hasn’t showed any signs of self-harming for months now, he still had a lot of his old wounds.

On october 6th we took him to have a x-ray done of his left hand.

In the early hours of the morning we took him to the Clinican vet clinic, near the town of Cassà de la Selva. He was very calm during the ride and he kept looking out of his cage out of pure curiosity. We did not have to anesthetize him to get the x-ray done, he was very cooperative and did not complicate the whole process. Thanks to the x-ray we were able to make sure that Nico’s bones weren’t infected however it seems that he has artritis in one of his fingers due to his old wounds.

We will keep you posted!

It has been two weeks since his surgery and Nico is already back with his family. It all could not have gone better.

During the first few days we were scared that he had suffered of a brain lesion, he wasn’t able to stand on his feet, he had no strengh and he was uncoordinated. However, Dr. Rimbau, that paid Nico several visits, reassured us that it was all normal and that he was showing incredible progress. Kids his age spend quite a bit of time in the hospital before they can get better. One week exactly after his surgery, Nico surprised us all! There he was walking and climbing almost normally. And not only that, he had stopped bitting himself so his wounds were almost fully healed. We hope that this is the start of a new life for Nico.

This past Saturday January 21st, Nico underwent surgery for his congenital brain malformation, known as Chiari malformation.

This is the first time in history that an operation of this type was done on a primate and not a human. In the first hours of the morning, we were already getting ready at Mona, and we arrived at the Canis veterinary clinic, in Girona, before 10. The neurosurgeons Dr.Rimbau and Dr.Lafuente and their team were waiting for us there. The surgery lasted a little bit over two hours and everything went smoothly. However, after the surgery Nico suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest. During several minutes, doctors, vets and anesthetists fought to bring Nico back to life and succeeded in reanimating him. That same day, when we were sure he was okay we brought him back to Mona. After spending the night under the careful watch of Olga Feliu, Nico started responding to stimuli in the next morning. Nico was discoordinated, but thanks to Dr.Rimbau’s check up visit we learned that it was normal after such surgery. He will spend the next few days and nights under supervision as the post surgery phase is the most critical one. We will keep you posted!

As we wrote in the 11th issue of our magazine, after completing an MRI we have learned that Nico has a congenital brain malformation called Chiari malformation and that is associated with a disease known as syringomyelia.

We have decided that Nico will undergo surgery after having met with several brain surgeons, we have come to the conclusion that that surgery is our only option. If we do not go through with the surgery Nico could risk losing all of his motor skills and could end up paralyzed. What worries us the most is that since his brain is not properly placed in his brain, one single sneeze could kill him. Dr.Rimbau, expert in these types of surgery, has selflessly offered his help to our organization. It goes without saying that this operation comes with certain risk, morever it is successful in humans 84% of the time. We hope that after his surgery Nico will be able to go back to normal and live a healthy life.