I’m really sad to hear Fiona didn’t make it - or at least that’s how it sounded in your post.
I just saw this and was going to reply because we have been dealing with this exact situation for a couple of years now with a young Lionhead of about 3.5 years.
He had major genetic dental disease and has had almost all his molars removed, and he has developed multiple abscesses.
Originally we discovered the problem when one of his eyes was bulging out, and X-rays revealed his teeth were growing back up into his eye socket, and down into his jaw bone.
He’s currently on 2x daily penicillin injections and we’re constantly vigilant on his weight, eating and he has regular tooth trims and X-rays, as well as CAT scans.
Keeping him alive has been very expensive but very rewarding!
When I think back to what we could have done, and what the vets could have done differently - we could have made sure he ate more hay for a start. He never really ate it, probably partly due to his existing problems, and we didn’t think much of it. He used to eat pellets twice a day and veggies, and we thought that was normal.
We probably could have noticed something unusual about it earlier, it we just didn’t know.
The other thing is - when we realised the problem we were kind of slow to act decisively because we didn’t know what was happening, and different vets have different opinions, including being told a couple of times that there was not much to be done.
I wish we had moved faster to remove or trim the problem teeth, then when any abscess or infection was detected we should have started his penicillin injections immediately, and kept them going for the long term instead of stopping and starting every few weeks.
The penicillin was eventually what helped bring his abscess under control, and now he has two more, we are back on the injections attempting to be aggressive and thorough.
We’ve been on a long road of many stasis episodes from pain, trying different treatments and medicines, and horrible days of forcibly cleaning his open wounds from the abscess, and we’re still learning.
To answer your original questions, at first we went to the vet weekly for abscess cleaning and check ups, then every two weeks for tooth trims - incisors and molars, and now we are down to every three weeks for tooth trims and check ups.
All in all we’ve been almost 80 times in three years. We counted the entries in his log book.
Let me know if you have any other questions, and again, sorry to hear of your loss.
I’m really sad to hear Fiona didn’t make it - or at least that’s how it sounded in your post.
I just saw this and was going to reply because we have been dealing with this exact situation for a couple of years now with a young Lionhead of about 3.5 years.
He had major genetic dental disease and has had almost all his molars removed, and he has developed multiple abscesses.
Originally we discovered the problem when one of his eyes was bulging out, and X-rays revealed his teeth were growing back up into his eye socket, and down into his jaw bone.
He’s currently on 2x daily penicillin injections and we’re constantly vigilant on his weight, eating and he has regular tooth trims and X-rays, as well as CAT scans.
Keeping him alive has been very expensive but very rewarding!
When I think back to what we could have done, and what the vets could have done differently - we could have made sure he ate more hay for a start. He never really ate it, probably partly due to his existing problems, and we didn’t think much of it. He used to eat pellets twice a day and veggies, and we thought that was normal.
We probably could have noticed something unusual about it earlier, it we just didn’t know.
The other thing is - when we realised the problem we were kind of slow to act decisively because we didn’t know what was happening, and different vets have different opinions, including being told a couple of times that there was not much to be done.
I wish we had moved faster to remove or trim the problem teeth, then when any abscess or infection was detected we should have started his penicillin injections immediately, and kept them going for the long term instead of stopping and starting every few weeks.
The penicillin was eventually what helped bring his abscess under control, and now he has two more, we are back on the injections attempting to be aggressive and thorough.
We’ve been on a long road of many stasis episodes from pain, trying different treatments and medicines, and horrible days of forcibly cleaning his open wounds from the abscess, and we’re still learning.
To answer your original questions, at first we went to the vet weekly for abscess cleaning and check ups, then every two weeks for tooth trims - incisors and molars, and now we are down to every three weeks for tooth trims and check ups.
All in all we’ve been almost 80 times in three years. We counted the entries in his log book.
Let me know if you have any other questions, and again, sorry to hear of your loss.
Interesting... Fiona similar to yours, did not like to eat hay. I had her for over 2 years and she never really ate hay. I just assumed that was just her personal preference since she did happily eat salad, veggies and pellets. Now I'm wondering if there was more to it. She never had any symptoms until the eye started bulging. I also noticed that she had clear tears on one side from time to time but my hometown vet thought she just might have scratched it or something. I'll be down south at the exotic vet for a foster opportunity so I'm going to be asking a lot of questions to prevent this from happening again
I think the only way to know if anything was developing under the surface, would be to have once yearly xrays. Kind of like how us people do with our dentist(should do, anyways). That way it can hopefully be caught before anything becomes too severe, beyond turning around.
