Today was Ginger’s dental surgery.
Jayden wishing his best friend well before we departed for the vet’s.
At the vet’s, it is their protocol to do a heart scan (an ECHO) on geriatric cats (above 7 years old) before the cat undergoes general anaesthesia. Ginger passed his heart scan with flying colours. An ultrasound was also done on Ginger’s kidneys to check the progression of that kidney cyst on the right. Good news – the cyst has not grown since the last 16 days! We hope it has stopped growing. The vet says we could do another check in 6 months.
It hasn’t grown in size!
I left Ginger at the clinic as the procedure would only be done in the afternoon and he would be ready to come home in the evening. I’m always very, very worried when any of our cats undergo general anaesthesia. Anything can go wrong.
By evening, Ginger was ready to come home. So I went to the clinic to pick him up.
The vet said they also took Ginger’s blood to do a Chem10 (all results good) and a blood profile (also all good). It is all part of their clinic protocol now, to ensure the animal is fit to undergo the surgery. I am thankful that such protocols are in place to keep our pets safe.
Something happened during the surgery, though. Ginger started retching while under GA. The vet had to give him a deeper GA and he was still retching. If he had vomited, it would have been very dangerous, so the vet had to give him an anti-vomitting jab and this stopped the retching. The thing is, Ginger was fasted for a full 8 hours before surgery, and yet he retched during the procedure. The vet said maybe it was bile because of the fasting! How dangerous…
Because of the retching, the vet did not want to prolong or extend the surgery. Luckily the scaling had already been done and the premolar (that’s the bad tooth) on the top right was already extracted. The extraction also was not a simple one as the tooth had already fused with the bone. Ginger has one stitch at that spot now, to close up the gums. The molar next to it was salvaged and I would have to monitor this molar, apply Orozyme on it and brush it regularly to keep it clean. Perhaps if Ginger had not retched, this molar could have also been extracted, but I’m glad the vet did what she thought was best. Ginger’s left side was all very clean. His bad tooth was on the right. The vet thinks it is because the bottom teeth on the right had been extracted the last time, so Ginger does not eat on his right side. This caused the upper tooth to have a lot of tartar (from being underused). He must be eating only on his left side, hence, it is so clean.
Ginger was prescribed Clindamycin (antibiotic) for 5 days and transdermal Tramadol on standby for the pain. His Beazyme will continue and Cystopro will be on alternate days now.
Ginger was already totally wide awake when I reached the clinic, so we started our journey home. Unfortunately, the traffic was totally at a crawl so our journey home took more than double the usual time. As Ginger had been on drips for the procedure, he urinated in the carrier and this made him quite stressed.
I cleaned him up when we finally reached home.
Ginger ate very heartily for dinner, eating three helpings!
Let’s hope Ginger will not need another dental procedure after this.