Liung
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2013
- Messages
- 247
- Reaction score
- 111
I swear to any power listening that my buns have made it their life goal to develop every rare and weird health condition in existence. And today’s health condition is DISAPPEARING TEETH.
I brought Lahi and Delilah to the OVC for a checkup on Lahi’s ear which had a tumour surgically removed in December, and Delilah has a blocked tear duct that I wanted checked again.
And the vet comes back with “well everything you were worried about is fine, but here, have a bunch of new stuff to worry about.”
Delilah’s got pus buildup in her ears, which apparently if it gets too bad can cause head tilt and other neurological issues, and potentially eat into the bone and go septic. FUN. She’s now going to visit the OVC monthly to get her ears flushed with an oily solution designed to break up the pus. This is only management, the only actual “cure” is a major risky surgery to essentially drill into the ear canal through the bone to scoop it out, or something. Not even going to worry about that right now, that’s a lot of risk for something that isn’t currently causing problems.
Lahi needs his teeth trimmed once a year and so even though they hadn’t gotten bad enough to be hurting him, I said go ahead and do it, why wait until he’s in pain.
And when I went to pick them up, the vet showed me the pictures of his mouth. His right side is beautiful, teeth perfectly in line and flat. His left side... the top is a jumbled mess, which I expected. That was the side that caused so many issues back in 2014, had to have the very back molar removed entirely. It was pretty disturbing to actually see the extent of how bad they were but not surprising.
His left bottom side, however, was pretty much GONE. There is a single nub of a tooth showing. Everything else is just gums.
The vet said that this is not something that is completely unusual for rabbits, sometimes their teeth just start falling out if they have bad dental disease, or they start dissolving—!! I don’t remember exactly how she described it, I was sorta in shock, but she commented “sometimes it’s like we can just take a swab and just wipe their teeth away”. So when she saw that Lahi was missing all his teeth she hadn’t thought anything of it, assumed that was just normal for him... she straight up told me, “he’s had a couple previous extractions, right?”
But this is the first I’ve heard of it!! And Lahi has been getting his teeth done every year since Jan 2014!! And I feel like my previous vet probably would have told me if Lahi’s teeth were suddenly disappearing!
So did his bottom jaw just melt his left teeth in under a year?? WHY IS NATURE SO WEIRD?! WHY ARE RABBITS SO BIZARRE?!?!
I’m going to call my previous vet clinic tomorrow to ask if they have anything in their records from Lahi’s previous procedures about this, but my vet actually retired a couple months ago. If they didn’t take pictures then I just have to hope they can contact him and he’ll remember.
The OVC vet has promised to email me the pictures of Lahi’s teeth with his patient chart, I’ll post them here because truly this is a trip and a half. HIS TEETH ARE GONE. Apparently he’s missing some premolars on his top teeth, too!!
Lahi has only had one tooth removed, it was his upper left backmost molar, and I have it in a jar. They gave it to me when it was removed and I took it home and kept it.
Where the rest of his teeth have gone, NO ONE KNOWS.
I brought Lahi and Delilah to the OVC for a checkup on Lahi’s ear which had a tumour surgically removed in December, and Delilah has a blocked tear duct that I wanted checked again.
And the vet comes back with “well everything you were worried about is fine, but here, have a bunch of new stuff to worry about.”
Delilah’s got pus buildup in her ears, which apparently if it gets too bad can cause head tilt and other neurological issues, and potentially eat into the bone and go septic. FUN. She’s now going to visit the OVC monthly to get her ears flushed with an oily solution designed to break up the pus. This is only management, the only actual “cure” is a major risky surgery to essentially drill into the ear canal through the bone to scoop it out, or something. Not even going to worry about that right now, that’s a lot of risk for something that isn’t currently causing problems.
Lahi needs his teeth trimmed once a year and so even though they hadn’t gotten bad enough to be hurting him, I said go ahead and do it, why wait until he’s in pain.
And when I went to pick them up, the vet showed me the pictures of his mouth. His right side is beautiful, teeth perfectly in line and flat. His left side... the top is a jumbled mess, which I expected. That was the side that caused so many issues back in 2014, had to have the very back molar removed entirely. It was pretty disturbing to actually see the extent of how bad they were but not surprising.
His left bottom side, however, was pretty much GONE. There is a single nub of a tooth showing. Everything else is just gums.
The vet said that this is not something that is completely unusual for rabbits, sometimes their teeth just start falling out if they have bad dental disease, or they start dissolving—!! I don’t remember exactly how she described it, I was sorta in shock, but she commented “sometimes it’s like we can just take a swab and just wipe their teeth away”. So when she saw that Lahi was missing all his teeth she hadn’t thought anything of it, assumed that was just normal for him... she straight up told me, “he’s had a couple previous extractions, right?”
But this is the first I’ve heard of it!! And Lahi has been getting his teeth done every year since Jan 2014!! And I feel like my previous vet probably would have told me if Lahi’s teeth were suddenly disappearing!
So did his bottom jaw just melt his left teeth in under a year?? WHY IS NATURE SO WEIRD?! WHY ARE RABBITS SO BIZARRE?!?!
I’m going to call my previous vet clinic tomorrow to ask if they have anything in their records from Lahi’s previous procedures about this, but my vet actually retired a couple months ago. If they didn’t take pictures then I just have to hope they can contact him and he’ll remember.
The OVC vet has promised to email me the pictures of Lahi’s teeth with his patient chart, I’ll post them here because truly this is a trip and a half. HIS TEETH ARE GONE. Apparently he’s missing some premolars on his top teeth, too!!
Lahi has only had one tooth removed, it was his upper left backmost molar, and I have it in a jar. They gave it to me when it was removed and I took it home and kept it.
Where the rest of his teeth have gone, NO ONE KNOWS.
