Roller Coaster

This past week has been a roller coaster. Last Tuesday during nail trims, we found Storm with her whole left side of her face swollen, eye shut. My vet had left for the day, so we went to CAVES in Concord, NH. They couldn't find a pocket to drain, so we started antibiotics, eye cream and pain meds. We drove to our regular vet at 8:30 the next morning to find out that her I had was completely dead back to the optical nerve and that she had to have it removed. The vet called me while she was under and asked me if I wanted to do the surgery because she didn't know if she would be able to live through it. Having been through an eye removal on a sugar glider before I knew that it was extremely expensive. When I told the vet that I thought it would cost about $1,200 she actually told me to think more about the glider than the money that we could work something out later. I couldn't put storm down in for a simple eye infection even though I knew that it would be a hard recovery.

The first 72 hours are the hardest and she made it through with flying colors. Last night her I began to leak little drops of pus. We went to the vet this morning to have her stitches removed but her cheek is full of pus and when the vet probed it it started leaking out. We have to wait until next week to have her stitches out and we're going to increase the cleaning of her face to see if that helps.

The main reason I'm telling all of you this, is because it's extremely important to have a relationship with your vet before an emergency. The vet office is absolutely wonderful everybody in there is so caring about the animal.