common snapping turtle

This snapping turtle came in with several shell fractures. Several on the top shell (carapace) which I repaired by drilling holes in the edge of the shell on either side of the fracture and looping wire through the holes to hold the fracture in place....and one big on on her bottom shell (plastron). Here is a pic of her on her back (under anesthesia)

and a close-up of the fracture....the arrow is pointing to it and the black line is parallel to it so you can see how long it is. It extends from one edge of the plastron to the other so essentially, the 2 edges of the fracture are moveable and keep moving up and done (dorsal and ventral) as it's broken all the way through in that area.

I wanted to try a new technique where I drill screws into the shell and connect the screws with wire but there were a few problems

-the fracture pieces kept collapsing dorsally (into the turtle) even with the wire/screws so if i just did that, the pieces wouldn't stay aligned....they would "V" down into the turtle

-once the screws and wire were in place, i didn't want pressure on the screws or the fracture, and once the turtle was upright (sternal) she would be putting all of her weight on the screws since they would be sticking out a bit (they don't make stainless steel screws smaller than 1/2", ugh).

-the fracture edges were VERY hard to align even when manually holding them together--they didn't want to go into their "natural" position which would make repair difficult

SO after running around the center trying to think of an answer, i came up with this...i found a plastic lid from a heavy plastic jar and drilled holes in it, then placed the screws through the holes and into the holes I had drilled into the shell--this prevented the fracture edges from collapsing into her body...however, since the lid had to be very rigid, it was difficult to hold the fracture in place while placing the lid, so the fracture didn't align correctly BUT it's not collapsing into her body; it will heal---will just take longer.

the next problem was that i didn't want pressure on the lid at all or it might bump around the fracture.

so i took one of those pool noodles, cut it in half and glued some thick pieces around the lid...

and then glued a frisbee onto the pool noodles

she woke up very slow from anesthesia and I'm afraid may not make it. Manipulating the fracture so much (b/c it was so difficult to align) and having her on her back for ~30 min may have been too stressful for her....we'll see over the next few days.