Hello! Long time lurker, rare commenter.
I wanted to share my experience with my 4lb mini lop who needed her eye removed. It sounds scary and it was a bit of a journey, but she had the procedure yesterday and is recovering beautifully!
TL;DR – if you have the resources, insist on going to not only a rabbit savy vet, but a vet that routinely does more invasive procedures on rabbits than just spays and teeth filings. And although the vet may specialize in a certain body part (in this case, ophthalmology), they may be excessively cautious if they don’t regularly treat rabbits.
In November, I noticed Claire’s right eyeball looked a little bulged. I called her primary vet and got her in the week of Thanksgiving, and they couldn’t find anything wrong so we scheduled her for a dental trim and X-rays under sedation the following week. Nothing showed up so we were referred to an ophthalmologist.
The ophthalmologist did more testing and suggested she likely has a mass behind her eye pushing it out and would need a CT to verify. She suggested a CT with biopsy of whatever was behind to determine if it’s cancer, etc. she was very apprehensive about surgery and explained how delicate their blood vessels are around the eye socket.
I was able to find an exotic vet 1.5hrs away that treats exotics and also has a CT. We went in December for a second opinion and I decided to go with enucleation and just send out whatever is behind her eye for testing instead of subjecting her to an additional trip and sedation and stress.
We drove up the first week of January and I got a call that they were about to begin cutting, but she stopped breathing 5x and wanted to know if I wanted to proceed. I asked what the options were because that sounded, uh, not good. The surgeon called me back and explained her labs showed she was a bit anemic and we could reschedule the surgery to see if she responds better on a different day. I agreed and surgery was rescheduled for Jan 26. We kept her on pain meds and daily eye drops until her appointment. In the meantime, the eye continued to bulge more and developed gunk and redness. Her behavior did not change one iota, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong unless you looked at her eye. If she had show. Signs of pain or distress, i would have treated her as a hospice situation because i did not want her to suffer.
Surgery was yesterday and they called me when she was finished to tell me it went perfectly! Her bloodwork showed she was no longer anemic, so perhaps that contributed to her previous sensitivity to the anesthesia. They actually didn’t find any kind of mass behind her eye, so the eye itself was the culprit. They’re sending it out for testing to see what it could be.
She’s recovering beautifully – eating, pooping, angrily snatching bits of banana from my hands, taking her meds without an issue.
Sorry for the long post, I know I’ve seen some questions about the procedure and wanted to share. She hasn’t been able to see out of that eye since at least December so she won’t have an issue adjusting, she will just have fur grown over the area where an eyeball would be. Currently she’s separated from her husbun to avoid him grooming her surgery site.
by CloverBun