Milky discharge from a single eye

[Liung]

So this is more an FYI post than anything. I took Lahi and Delilah to the vet today for their annual checkup. They are extremely healthy, especially considering they are respectively 11 and 7 years old this year.

However for the past few weeks I've noticed Delilah's cheek has been wet. Just one cheek (which mostly ruled out environmental causes and some illnesses—if there was an irritant like dust it would affect both eyes, same with certain illnesses) and I checked to see if it was caused by an injury (her eye looked completely normal otherwise, and it didn't improve after a week)

View attachment ImageUploadedByRabbit Forum1515629929.742590.jpg

It didn't seem to bother her, she was as happy to be scratched on the right cheek as the left and didn't flinch when I prodded her eye. No sign of pink eye or conjunctivitis either.

So during their physical the Dr took a look and pronounced it likely a blocked tear duct. When the corner of her eye is pressed, it leaks fairly copious amounts of a white, milky liquid.

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So: blocked tear duct. The dr agreed that it didn't seem to be infected at all, though it's possible the inside of the duct has an infection. It could also be physical: Delilah sheds CONSTANTLY and it's very common to see loose fur in her eye. Usually it accumulates gunk and gross mucus and eventually comes out on its own from the corner of her eye (or I can't stand looking at it any longer and gently wipe it out with a wet Kleenex) but it's possible for stuff in her eye to get lodged in the tear duct.

But, considering her age, it could also be a tooth root. Bunny teeth grow constantly, not just out from the gum but also up into the gum. At age 7 an overgrown tooth root rubbed against Lahi's eye and caused a retrobulbar abscess. Bunny breeds with shortened faces like Lahi's dwarf and Delilah's mini lop are particularly prone to tooth problems.

But here's the silver lining: NOT IMMINENTLY FATAL!!! I could have sworn it wasn't possible, for rabbits to have a health problem that wouldn't try to kill them, but Delilah found it. The rabbit health unicorn. The worst case scenario here (according to my vet) is that she gets pink eye.

\o/ YASSS!! I'm so used to bracing myself for the most dire news possible "if you don't start treatment immediately your rabbit will die in _____ horrible ways".

So we're going to give it a few weeks, see if it resolves on its own with some help of some face massages. This is a thing that is apparently possible, a rabbit getting better without major effort and medical intervention. I know, I was shocked too.

If in a couple weeks her eye is still milky, the vet is going to knock her out so he can safely flush the tear duct (apparently it's pretty painless but since he's sticking basically a needle down the tear duct a flinch at the wrong time could cause some serious damage. Lahi and Delilah are model patients but better safe than sorry) and while she's out, do an x-ray to see if it could be a tooth root causing it.

If it is? Well, he doesn't think a weepy eye really warrants removing the tooth. She's not in any discomfort, it's not causing infections... as long as it's not threatening her wellbeing, it's not really practical to leap into the tangle of problems surrounding pulling a tooth just to fix a weepy eye.

Does perhaps foreshadow future tooth problems, though :/ I've been astonishingly lucky, other than a few bouts of GI stasis a year this will be the first actual health problem Delilah has had in... ever, I think. Between the weirdly-bred face and the ears, lops are usually pretty prone to health problems.

Fingers crossed it's just a bit of fur stuck up there!

 

[JBun]

I'm not sure how rabbit savvy you feel your vet is, but white discharge(pus) is a sure sign of infection, which is what it appears your rabbit has in that one picture. It would be clear if there was no infection. I had a rabbit with the same problem, chronically infected blocked tear duct with white discharge. I had it flushed but it just got blocked again. She was on oral antibiotics, but that didn't keep it cleared up. The thing that worked best for her was ongoing antibiotic eye drops/ointment. I just had to put it in her eyes daily until she passed from old age. It was the only thing that would keep the tear duct from getting blocked, allow drainage to the tear duct, and helped keep the infection under control as much as possible as it would never clear up completely. So if your vet didn't prescribe ophthalmic antibiotic drops/ointment, if it were me I would want to request some. I used gentamycin eye drops, ciprofloxacin eye drops(cheapest option as a 3pk from costco), and neo/poly eye ointment. I liked the ointment best as I felt it helped the most, but I did have to change eye drops over time as one became ineffective.

If you have xrays done, if in your situation I would want to make sure that an infected tooth as the cause is checked for while having a thorough dental exam done while she's sedated.

Here's some info on the condition if you would like to read up on it.
http://wildpro.twycrosszoo.org/S/00dis/Miscellaneous/DacrocystitisRabbit.htm
http://www.medirabbit.com/EN/Eye_diseases/Discharge/eye_discharge.htm

 

[Liung]

Oh, geez. My vet is super good with rabbits, he's an exotic vet that does all sorts, the only vet in my area more highly recommended for exotics is attached to a zoo (and is about twice as expensive, ouch). He did actually mention dacrocystitis as a possible cause but ultimately he said that her eye looks 100% fine, the discharge is the only symptom. I didn't question the whiteness because any fur in her eye gets surrounded by the white goo mentioned in your second link, so it didn't seem unusual to me that her tear ducts would produce white discharge.

Your first link was extremely dense in medical jargon but from what I can parse it seems to agree with him, that dacrocystitis generally presents with signs of infection of the eye such as conjunctivitis. He knows that I'd recognize the signs of an eye infection pretty quick and told me to update him if anything changes.

She's shown no signs of discomfort or pain, and she really does seem 100% healthy other than the wet cheek. My panic button is, as always: no eating/no pooping, so I think for now I'll give manually expressing it a shot first, but move up the timeline to a week before we schedule the flush and X-ray. I was a little surprised he didn't give me some eye drops or similar to bring home just in case, but it could be we both just forgot entirely since we moved on to Lahi's exam right after. I'll give him a call tomorrow to double check.

Thanks for the advice! I'll def look into the eyedrops you mentioned. I remember when Lahi had his retrobulbar abscess I was given eyedrops to keep his eye from drying out and I found the ointment was a little more difficult to apply than drops but definitely seemed more effective.

 

[JBun]

Sorry, I probably wasn't very clear in my explanation. I don't believe that your rabbit has an eye infection, just that there is infection in the tear duct itself. That is why white pus oozes out when you press on the tear duct. You'll know because the white stuff is thick and sticky. White discharge, whether from the nose, eyes, or from a wound, is always a sign of infection in rabbits. Normal healthy tear ducts will never produce white discharge. It's pretty impossible for much if any fur, to get trapped in the tear duct itself. Once you see your vet flush it out, you'll understand why. It's tiny. If it were just a bit of fur fluff that they can sometimes get in their eyes, that will be mostly a clump of wet fur. It's not going to have the characteristic thickness and stickiness that pus has, unless there was also pus mixed with the fur. Another way to tell if it's pus, is if it has a chance to dry out when it's in the fur around the eye. It's like glue or cement. It dries hard and is difficult to get out of the fur. Normal clear discharge won't be like that. So the second link I included was because at the end of it they have pictures of a rabbits eye with white discharge from an infection and not the fluff bits you see in the previous pictures.

Yeah, ointment definitely is harder than the drops, it just seemed to work better. I'm glad you have confidence in your vet. That's always comforting. Like you said, maybe he just got distracted and forgot to send you home with drops. I just always question a vets experience cause I've had my share of ending up going to some incompetent ones and have read too many other similar stories. So it's one of the first things I'll ask.

 

[Liung]

It's not though, thick and sticky. And when it dries it doesn't dry hard, just spikes her fur a bit, though when I rub at it, the fur feels slightly powdery/gritty, honestly like my hair after I put hairspray in it. Or more accurately, like how my skin feels after my tears dry: not like they were pure water but like there was an extra something in them that makes my skin feel a little tight and, not gritty exactly but like something's been left behind.

When you press on the corner of her eye what comes out looks identical to milk, purely liquid. White tears. Dunno if you can tell from the picture but it's simply welling over my finger, and directly after the picture it started dripping, I had to go get a Kleenex. My sister joked that I'm "milking" my rabbit, and she's not wrong that that's what it looks like.

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I'll letcha know what my vet says about the eye drops! And I'll keep an eye on if the liquid thickens at all.

 

[Hermelin]

My rabbit had almost the same problem but I figured out he couldn’t handle the bedding or the stuff I had in the litter box, he was highly sensitive to beddings so after a treatment with drops and changing the bedding and litter box he stopped having problem after a month. My vet told me to use the drops twice a day and massage close to the teardrop channel. Glad it worked or my rabbit would had to get operated, my rabbit had clogged teardrop channels (don’t know what it’s called).

I hope everything goes well with your cute bunny.

 

[JBun]

I've just never seen white discharge without it being from an infection. But as long as your bun is doing well, that's the important thing. And maybe expressing her tear duct, and if you get her started on eye drops, maybe this will get things cleared up fairly easily.

 

[RavenousDragon]

(I know this post is late but: )

Pus in rabbits is VERY thick (Think ricotta cheese. They have heterophils instead of neutrophils, so no white runny stuff like dogs, cats, humans, and basically every other mammal!). The discharge is probably white because of the salt and other ions in the tears sort of coming out of solution as it dries out a little (have you ever had white or yellow crusts near your eyes when you wake up? Yellow is more common, but white is normal too). I wouldn't be particularly worried about infection unless it becomes thick or smells. Did your vet do a smear/ look at it on a slide under a microscope? That would clear up what it actually is in a few seconds (heterophils are easy to spot and very cool looking! Dry-ish tears not so much).

How is he doing?

 

[Liung]

So I actually just came from the vet to look at her eye again, it cleared up quite a bit just from me manually expressing it but it's come back. So at this point Dr Bill thinks it's likely either an overgrown tooth root or dacryocystitis.

So I went in today to discuss doing an x-ray to look for tooth roots or put her under to do an antibiotic flush. I probably would have said do the x-ray, because if it's a tooth root flushing won't solve the problem...

But as I was packing her up to go to the vet I found a huge tumour growing on the underside of her dewlap. I haven't had cause to pick her up lately so I have zero ideas how recent it is. Surgery for lump removal has been scheduled for next Wednesday, and she'll have her eye flushed while she's under! If it keeps coming back after that and resists antibiotics, we'll move on to considering x-rays, but my vet doesn't have the dental equipment to do a full extraction, she'd have to be shipped off to a specialist.

Personally, I think it's going to end up being a tooth root. She's a lop, which I know are notorious for tooth problems due to the bad shape of their skull, and she hasn't had a single tooth problem in 7 years. Not even a tooth spur. Lahi, my dwarf mix, has to get spurs trimmed roughly once a year, and when he was 7 year old one of his teeth had an overgrown root that caused an abscess behind his eye and then later became loose and had to be removed entirely. I've been counting my lucky stars that Delilah has been so unbelievably healthy, but Lahi was also problem free... until January 2014 when he turned 7 and promptly began developing a new health problem every month.

Well, Delilah turned 7 this past February and she's already had a blocked tear duct and now a tumour. If she's decided to follow Lahi's example and spend the rest of the year draining my wallet I'm going to cry.

I'm going to write down all your suggestions to bring with me on Wednesday, I completely forgot today in my panic over the tumour. Or maybe just get a sample of the tears and do a smear myself; I'm doing blood smears next Friday with my Lab Ops class, I'm sure there will be a few slides to spare for some milky eye discharge.

I'm going to make a second post for the tumours, since we're assuming they're unrelated to the eye issues.