I brought Jessie in for a dentistry at work today, her teeth needed to be done even though I scale them at home often, plus I wanted a good hip x-ray under sedation.
Turns out her dead tooth doesn't need to be taken out (or at least hot yet), I'm so happy about that! I think she had hit her face on the doorframe trying to run past me in the spring last year, tought nothing of it and a few days later, her upper canine turned pink! Brought her to the dentitry specialist who used an electric current machine and confirmed that the tooth was dead, and proposed a root canal... Ugh, no. So I figured I'd x-ray the tooth yearly and monitor for any pain, swelling or nasal discharge, and luckily it seems just fine for now. Phew!
At some point as I cleaned her teeth I totally freaked out because her hard palate was soft and seemed to have air between the skin and the bone!! It really felt like it was inflated like a balloon... Apparently it's such uncommon thing, and not dangerous, the skin just kinds of lifts off the palate and somehow air gets in there... VERY WEIRD though. The vet had to look it up cause he'd never seen that before, he aspirated it and only air came out. Has anyone encountered that? The girs also plucked her tongue hairs, that's just gross.
She recovered quickly but had freaky bouts of reverse sneezing-like after I extubated her... We needed to hold her mouth open, and pull her tongue to help her out, and at somepoint she turned a bit blue... Not cool. But after a while with no stimulation and her eyes covered, she did ok. She's always a bag of surprises... Puffy palate, reverse sneezing... Gah.
Her hips are fine, but the vet manipulated her legs while she was under, and now she was limping outside earlier... He's proposing to do Cartrophen shots as needed, or to put her on J/D, but I don't plan on changing her food. I'm in total denial that my dog is getting older and needs stuff for hip/knee issues! I don't want to take that step, it just makes me realize that she's not as young as she used to be.
That was pretty much J's day, now she's pooped and sleeping in her chair, with glistening teeth and a balloon hard palate...