Olive has a droopy upper lip :(

Rabbits Online Forum

Help Support Rabbits Online Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

ollie1115

Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
14
Reaction score
1
Location
NULL
So about 3 weeks ago my holland lop, Olive who is 5 years old ran up to me and immediately when she looked up at me I could see the asymmetry in her face. It appeared to be only effecting her upper lip area. At first I thought it was swollen, but upon further inspection I believe it to be more of a drooping. After looking on the internet I found that two commons causes could be ear or tooth related since the facial nerve can be effected in both scenarios. I felt around her jaw line and looked at her front teeth, nothing felt strange. I looked in her ears, they looked good. Olive was not effected in any other way, she was still binkying, drinking, eating and poop as normal.

I scheduled a vet appointment that week. The vet did not see anything wrong and thought it may be a Bell's palsy type of situation. We were sent home. Olive continued to act the same at home, but it still wasn't sitting right with me, so I scheduled a 2nd vet appointment with a more rabbit savvy vet. She did a way more in-depth check up, checking her teeth and ears. She said there was some stuff in her ears, but checked it under a microscope and it did not appear to be anything alarming. She could clearly see the drooping, but found it odd that nothing else was effected. The vet sent out an ear culture and sent us home with the oral baytril for 10 days. The ear culture came back negative with no bacteria found. Olive is at the end of her 10 day course of Baytril and there has been no difference, good or bad.



I am wondering if anyone has ever dealt with a similar situation like this, any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have attached a picture of sweet, Olive, and her droopy lip. It is on the right side, best pic I could get.
 

Attachments

  • Olivelump.jpg
    Olivelump.jpg
    82.9 KB · Views: 5
Has your vet done any head/dental X-rays? Only way to tell if a tooth root is the problem would be through imaging, might be worth speaking about it?
 
dear Ollie,-this is a major health issue,-please see an exotic dvm asap--required are facial radiographs to determine cause ,either dental or abscess.{inflammation}-.-I live on the other side of the pond-my exotic dvm came from London gb-college--super vet school and visit medirabbit.com .sincerely james waller for joseph r cottontail rip
 
I agree with the others that having xrays done would be the next step to determine if there is an internal infection going on, either as an inner/middle ear infection or as a dental infection.

There are other possibilities for facial drooping like injury, inflammation, tumor, stroke, etc. An anti inflammatory might be helpful if there's any swelling contributing to the problem. If your vet didn't prescribe any, I would ask about it.
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Neurology/Differentials/facial.htm
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Neurology/Otit/otitis.htm
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Neurology/Mo_rabbit/Mo_rabbit.htm
 

Latest posts

Back
Top