Fee is home. She’s missing 3 upper molars and we’re missing $722.10 but what Dr Ackre found shocked even him. He called me as soon as he found out what was really going on.
Awhile back, Rueben and Fee were tussling, as usual, and he went for the left side of her face, as usual. It was just 2 punctures, an upper and a lower, and I’d treated many of them working for vets. So I treated it. She wasn’t worried about it - didn’t pay any attention to it. Neither did I until it abscessed. Uh oh. Took her in to our vet and he cleaned it out, gave her an antibiotic injection, and sent her home with an oral antibiotic and a topical that I squirted into both holes 2x a day. As expected, it healed up. And we didn’t think anymore about it until just before New Years. It was back!! Took her in after New Years, and he wondered if it just hadn’t cleared up completely. As I know well from my gangrene, it just takes an unnoticed little colony of germs to wreak havoc.
We went through the same routine, except this time there was only the upper hole. He thought then that maybe she had a tooth issue, but her teeth looked great - strong, white, and with very little tarter which was easily cleaned off - so we opted for the same treatment and postponed x-rays because it’s so stressful given her size. The abscess would start to get better then get worse again. So today they gave her extra sedation and did the x-rays. What a mess in there!! But the weird thing is that her teeth looked fine when we looked in her mouth before he pulled them. The roots were another story. One had an exceptionally long root, and all of them were corroded and had abscess pockets attached.
We talked about it and we suspect that there was just enough infection left from the first abscess, and it was so close to the sinus on that side, that it invaded and slowly colonized there, then affected the roots of her three teeth. Whatever happened, so far that abscess has cost us more than we paid for her in the first place. She’s worth it, but it smarts in the wallet, especially right now.
