2024 was quite a year for Matilda.
Early in the year, one Saturday morning we noticed Matilda hunched up on the rug in the living room – a place she did not normally spend much time. When she refused a treat, we knew something must be up – so we hopped in the car for the hour-long drive down to the emergency vet hospital.
After examination, we were told that Matilda had several cracked teeth (!!??) and that they had become infected. There was no alternative but to remove them.
We agreed of course (anything for our little princess) and spent the next seeming eternity waiting for news from the hospital. Eventually we got word that the surgery was complete – but that in order to remove the bad teeth, they’d had to go in through Matilda’s cheek.
The teeth that were removed were the molars on her upper-left – which in rabbits are way at the back of the jaw, which is why they had to go in through her cheek to get to the last one.
After nearly a week in recovery at the hospital, Matilda was deemed well enough to come home – but she didn’t end up staying at home for very long. After only a few days, she still wasn’t eating properly (despite our best efforts) and to avoid going into stasis she had to go back to the hospital.
At the hospital, they also had to keep flushing her incision site and re-packing it with antibiotic beads. She was kept under close observation and given critical care feedings every few hours – and this went on for a whole additional week.
Finally, Matilda was able to come back home – and this time she kept eating on her own.
However, we still had all the after-care from her surgery – anyone who’s had major dental surgery will know how difficult the after-care can be. Matilda needed oral pain medication and antibiotics, as well as oral rinses to keep the extraction site clean on the inside of her mouth.
Worse yet, when we finally got the culture results from the labs, it turned out that Matilda’s infection was a particularly antibiotic-resistant strain, and the medicine we’d been giving her wasn’t going to cut it. So we had to get new medicine – which had to be given subcutaneously via a syringe, twice a day.
Needless to say, no one was enjoying this… but Matilda was a real trooper about it all. Despite how much she hated being picked up, she tolerated us giving her medicine and injections extraordinarily well – she always sat still for medicine time, even for the injections.
However, this infection she had was a stubborn one, and despite completing the entire course of medication, the infection was still not beaten: about a week after stopping it, we noticed some discharge from her nose. Taking her to the vet and doing a culture resulted in us finding out that it was the same bacteria… so back on the injections she had to go.
Poor Matilda was on these injections for about 6 weeks before we were eventually transitioned to a nebulizer treatment: Matilda would be placed in a plastic tub (we named it “Tilly’s Tub”) twice a day and a nebulizer was attached via a little hose and it pumped in a mist of water & medicine for her to breathe in… for 30 minutes at a time, twice a day, for another 6 weeks.
During this time we had to go away on two separate occasions, which was very difficult – we did not want to leave Matilda – but thankfully we are extraordinarily lucky to have a very, very good pet-sitting service who was willing to take care of Matilda, including doing the injections (when we had to go away during the time Matilda was still getting injections) and doing the nebulizer treatment.
Once we’d completed the course of antibiotics using the nebulizer, the vet suggested we continue the treatments (just once a day), but with water only – so basically giving Matilda her own little cool sauna.
By this point it was already June, but thankfully, after all this time and effort, we’d finally eliminated Matilda’s infection and she could stop all treatment.
It was an incredibly long and difficult (and expensive) ordeal, but we got through it – and so did Matilda, our tough little princess, who has now lived through liver lobe torsion AND major dental surgery. We’re so incredibly grateful that, despite needing to continue with oral rinses (to keep the spot where her teeth were removed clean and clear), Matilda loves the oral rinses and will happily take them like they’re a treat.
Matilda does now need periodic tooth-trimmings, because the molars on the bottom of her jaw, below the ones that were removed, don’t have anything to grind against, and since rabbit teeth grow constantly… this means her remaining teeth on that side will grow and grow and grow! But despite hating going to the vet, Matilda has tolerated these trimmings very well, which we are also very thankful for.
Matilda has been through a lot, and 2024 in particular was a really rough year for her, but our little princess doesn’t give up, and she continues to be just as energetic, curious, and playful as she always has been – snuggling with Chuck, demanding treats from us, and just generally being an adorable little weirdo. But we love her, and we’re so very happy she’s still with us, despite everything 2024 threw at her!
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