We have a sore face 🙁

We have a sore face! Poor Baby has a big bandage for his cheek wound 🙁 He’s back at home, very pleased to see Pico and eating well. He did a big poo on the horse box which was very exciting as there was the possibility he might get an impaction after being sedated for so long again today.

Very pleased to have him home!! :db: Will worry about the credit card bill later… 8o(

Well. We’ve had quite the stress over the past few weeks.

When we bought Dino he had a retained tooth. We knew this, there were x-rays and although it was ok at the time it looked like if it ever caused any issues it would be a pretty straight-forward job to remove it. Just before I went on holiday in July the area around the retained tooth (which could be seen as a lump on the outside of the jaw) got very swollen and we asked the vet to take a look. Tried a week of Norodine and that didn’t really help and when I arrived back I had a message from the vet saying they wanted me to take him into the RVC for a CT Scan. And here starts the drama….

The CT scan showed what looked like an adult tooth with 3 fragments tucked to the inside of it. Decision was made to remove the fragments under standing sedation and try and save the adult tooth. This took 2 long sessions of sedation and he had to stay in over a weekend but came home a couple of weeks ago. He was really stressed by the experience – he’s never been away from home before so it was quite the learning curve! He was fine and settled in back home fairly quickly but over the swelling kept increasing and by the time his two week check up happened our vet removed two acorns (!) and a section of rotten tooth from the hole made by the surgery 😮

That was on Friday so Monday morning this week he was back at the RVC again and they had another go at taking all the bits out. It looks like this was a single adult tooth which has become infected and died, causing it to break up into fragments in his jaw. He’s had three sessions of sedation this week and, unfortunately, there’s a section of root that just can’t be removed. In order to get the bits out this time they’ve also had to make a hole right the way through the cheek (called a Buccotomy) but still the root will not come out. 8o(

He’s coming home tonight, and we have a hope that actually the remaining section might sort itself out given some time and anti-biotics but I’m not sure I hole out much hope. If they need to go back in the only thing to do is give him a general anaesthetic and make a hole in the underside of the jaw and push the root through into the mouth to remove it. This is obviously a bit risky which is why we didn’t do this initially but we may end up going there in the end. 😥

He’s insured for vets bills…but not dental and since technically this is a pre-existing condition no insurer would have paid out anyway. Total cost of this little escapade, which I’ve had to put on a credit card: so far £3,800 with a possible additional £2,000 is we need to do the further surgery. So much for ‘easy to remove if needed’ 🙁

This has been phenomenally stressful for all of us and the thought that it might not be over yet makes me feel quite sick, but I’m happy with the decisions we made given the information we had available and the RVC really have been brilliant. Fingers crossed for a miracle that it sorts itself out now please!!!