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Post by teemu on Mar 11, 2022 16:20:28 GMT
I've seen her eating hay and drinking water from the bottle today. That metacam is doing a whole lot of good, getting her to use her mouth again One thing that came up in the vet visit was that she seems to have an uneven bite. It's unlikely that this is just due to the fracture, because her front teeth are actually not evenly long and something like that would take more than a couple of days to develop. Her jaw seems to have a misalignment of some sort (not due to the fracture either, since the fracture is very minor and has not affected the shape of her jaw), so the incisors are not wearing down evenly. I've also noticed this when I've been syringe feeding her: her bottom jaw seems to veer slightly to her right (my left). It's rather minor, and her front teeth are getting at least some contact so they're wearing down, but I wonder if it's something that might become more pronounced with age. Will definitely have to keep watching in case it gets worse over time.
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Post by teemu on Mar 13, 2022 22:11:10 GMT
Suti has been doing well for the past few days. She hasn't lost any weight, which is a very good thing, and she has been eating solids as much as she can, and gets two helpings of soft food (essentially as much as she wants) during the day, when I give her her painkillers. She's behaving very much like normal now, and goes through her days like before.
We really lucked out this time!
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Post by deguconvert on Mar 14, 2022 18:13:23 GMT
WHEW!! So glad to hear this, Teemu!
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Post by teemu on Mar 15, 2022 16:47:47 GMT
She's now doing this weird thing where she keeps teething at everything and trying to bite things. I think it's because she can feel how her incisors are misaligned and she really wants to correct them, and maybe also just generally them growing just a bit longer than they usually are due to her eating more soft food.
On that note, they do actually look less crooked now. So she must be correcting the length difference by gnawing on things. But I'm really not sure why. Her jaw was fractured only for a few days before she was inspected at the vet (where the asymmetrical incisors were noticed), so I really don't think this would be just to a maybe a couple of days of inactivity. They don't grow *that* fast!
(essentially, the vet and later I noticed that her front teeth are asymmetrical, so that the left bottom one is longer and the left upper one is shorter and vice-versa. She has obviously started correcting this now, so it looks more like there is just a sharp, longer corner edge to the bottom incisor that hasn't been pruned yet.)
Limppu is also pretty stressed, probably because I have to keep catching Suti to get her out of the cage. It's weird, since she really likes the soft-food-CC mix I give her when I give her the painkillers, but she still doesn't want to come out when it's time, and tries to escape around the cage. Limppu freaks out pretty badly when this happens. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any way to fool Suti. She is too smart and obviously notices when I start prepping things, and even just connects the time of day with the feeding.
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Post by deguconvert on Mar 15, 2022 19:28:06 GMT
Actually . . . they grow very fast and a few days like she had could indeed had seen a growth that resulted from the broken jaw. I think it is AWESOME that Suti is proving so successful at getting her teeth back to the right conformation and length! Maybe she should teach classes on it for other degus. I'm sorry Limppu is stressed, but it isn't surprising. Often the other degus in the cage feel the change in energy when one of their members is trying to escape capture or treatment. They will both recover their normal demeanor and behaviors once treatment isn't needed anymore.
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Post by moletteuk on Mar 17, 2022 13:46:12 GMT
The stress for everyone of repeatedly having to catch a degu is awful, one of the worst things.
I had a degu who had an incisor that kept breaking and you could indeed see a difference in the growth in a couple of days. I reckon they grow at something like three quarters of a mm per day.
Her whole bite will have changed so she will need to wear in and realign all of her teeth, even if it's just by a tiny amount. Or it may just feel weird and she's doing her own physiotherapy.
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Post by teemu on Mar 17, 2022 14:14:21 GMT
Yeah, she has actually completely re-aligned her teeth by now. It's frankly amazing, I can't see any sign of them having been of different lengths or wonky at all now! She's obviously been working hard on making sure that things stay in order.
Today was also the first day that she won't be getting any metacam. She doesn't seem to be overly bothered, but Metacam does tend to linger for a bit, so I likely won't see how well she actually does until tomorrow. But she is doing very well for now. She keeps gnawing at everything and I've started letting them out into the kitchen again, too.
(I've still given her some soft food, just to be sure, but I'm thinking that if she's not in a notable amount of pain and is able to eat come tomorrow, I can likely let up on that as well. She wasn't too intrested in taking it in the morning anyway and took some coercing, probably because she's been eating a lot of regular food too.)
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Post by teemu on Mar 18, 2022 19:33:08 GMT
She's been doing totally normal today, active and seemingly totally painless. Eats seeds just fine, too. I think I don't need to hand-feed her any more, unless things take a dramatic turn.
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Post by deguconvert on Mar 21, 2022 5:32:11 GMT
WOO HOO!!! PARTY TIME!!
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