Broken Tooth Infection Operation - WORRIED!

[ellewoods]

CRISIS!! :( :(

Frey was kicked in the field last week, and all his face swelled up, but there was no heat in it, he was happy to have it touched and he was eating properly etc., so we left it for a day or two and the swelling went down...

Anyway yesterday he was ridden again and my friend was giving me a lesson, and she noticed his foam around his bit (normal, through working him) was turning pink ... whipped off his bridle, and he was bleeding slightly from inside his mouth .... called vet, and he has broken a tooth when he was kicked, which has the become infected quite badly :( He has some antibiotics, a 10 day course, if these dont work he can have 2 more courses, then if it still hasnt gone, he has to have an operation where the vet goes in through the bone, and its a serious op which has a 30% mortality rate :( Very scared and gutted!!

Cant believe it, my friend is a qualified vetinary nurse, he's been eating normally, happy, etc., cant believe he's so poorly... feel really bad not to have spotted something even though vet says we couldnt have.

Just praying the antibiotics take hold... :(

Has anyone had any experience with this sort of injury / the operation the vet is talking about?
Im so concerned, and I dont have enough experience to know what to do - Im so lucky my friend does.

[LMS]

Yes, we had something similar at our barn. One of our mares went to another stable for a while and after she was back, we eventually noticed the problem (I think it may have happened when she was gone & were never told).

We did everything we could for almost a year but even then unfortunatly, we were too late.

Your case is different, you are catching it early so there is hope. Think of the 70% chance of success.

I don't get tired of giving my little shpeel about my mare because I'm still in awe of it. It's meant to give hope.
In a nut shell (don't want to bore you): Oct 2004 she suffered a massive GP mycosis & told her prognosis was extremely poor.

I asked for time to think about it. (And in this case time is not a luxury) We took it one day at a time. Meanwhile I was frantically researching her case. One line in a medical publication was my daily affirmation to keep hope:"There have been cases of spontaneous recovery of GPM with medical therapy alone, but this is rare."

Ariel ended up being one of those "rare" cases.

So, keep your chin up ok?
If you're strong enough: research it on the internet and ask gazillions of questions to your friend & vet.

[ellewoods]

Thankyou so much LMS, you've made me feel more positive :) I had been panicking about the 30% failure rate instead of focusing on the 70% success rate. Just hoping madly that antibiotics clear it all out - he seems happy enough, and he's eating normally still, which are great signs, so fingers crossed. x

[ponylover88]

My old horse had a split tooth and an abcess inside it. He went down to Oakham to have his op, and was there for 2wks.
He had random patches on his neck, and down his legs which the hair had been clipped so they could put drips in, and then the stitches where they opened his underside up to drill thru. (They tried to remove it by going in thru his mouth but the tooth fell apart even more because the tooth was split right from the top, to the bottom of the root).
He had a massive swelling, at about 15cm long coming down from his face, which after many hours of us squeezing the puss etc out of the drain and cleaning it, it started to go down.
This pic is what he looked like 3-4months after his op. The swelling had gone down tonnes, and he was feeling much better in himself. He started off not eating a thing, to grandually eating a mouthful, then more and more. We had to get a syringe and syringe the bute down his throat sending me, who was holding his head down, up the wall ... literally!!
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y165/paddy95/Snip/Snip074.jpg
I have a full pic of him, not just his head, from the same day but from his condition, it looks quite distressing. He was at the vets for 3wks i think, because he had his first op, which wasnt sucessful on the friday (he went down on the thursday) then over the weekend he was shoved in a stable til monday when he had his main op. He started to look abit better after the first week, but the naughty hoss kept catching the wound and making it bleed. At this point, they had only put one or two stitiches in it (he did actually have about 20) so he didnt manage to pull any out. They leave it open to let the wound drain and start to heal. Things kept going wrong (:rolleyes: trust Snip!) so he stayed an extra couple of weeks before he was discharged.
About 5 months later, his packing came out to protect the whole that was left in his mouth, stops any food from getting in the wound, while it heals over, and although oakham wanted to see him again we didnt have transport so it was going to be expensive to transport him down again. But because the packing came out early, our vets wouldnt rexray the mouth because they thought something was wrong so we had to get transport down to oakham just for some xrays. Once they sedated him, they xrayed then had a feel inside his mouth, jees molars are sharp! - I had a feel too. The vet told me to watch my watch ('scuse the pun) so i took it off, and just to the second molar on Snips right side, it took up my arm up to about half way between my elbow and my shoulder!!! :eek:
This is him, after we had just bought him back into work after all this, around july/august time, just to show you a happy ending.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y165/paddy95/Snip/Snip134.jpg
Hes now got new owners, and he still looks happy (might have been happy to see me, but he looked happy and well in himself).