My sweet baby (f6) passed away during surgery for a retrobulbar abscess. Btw this is super long, but wanted to give details for anyone who might be going through this with their bun.
For background I got my girl from a local rabbit rescue. She had a hard life before I adopted her two years ago (someone left her in a dumpster), but you wouldn’t be able to tell based on how loving and joyful she was (with a very sassy side). We don’t know how old exactly she is, but vets guessed around 6 or 7. A year into having her she started having dental issues. Mostly overgrown teeth and a few spurs and malocclusions. I remember the doctor telling me about some discoloration, but no abscesses could be seen on x-ray and we would just watch her teeth. After her surgery I could tell she felt so much better and I had naively hoped we wouldn’t have anymore issues.
Flash forward to after thanksgiving I noticed she wasn’t quite right, it was very subtle, she started urinating outside of her litter box, and wasn’t finishing all of her greens-which was not normal for her as she was a little piggy. More background: I work at a vet clinic as a vet assistant (only cats and dogs) and I have rabbit owning experience, so I knew she needed to be seen immediately by a rabbit vet. We did a urinalysis as well as lower abdominal rads and looked at her teeth- all came back and appeared normal, however upon looking at her left ear she had pus coming from an unknown source. We treated it as an ear infection and cleared up a few weeks later, however she still wasn’t finishing her greens. The vet couldn’t give me an answer for that (we checked our bases), but I suspected it has something to do with her teeth even though there was no evidence to the naked eye, so I just monitored her closely.
Then one day I noticed her left eye was bulging and immediately scheduled an appointment with the only rabbit specialist in our state. Based on research I was sure it was a retrobulbar abscess and knew it would be a complicated diagnosis, so I wanted the best of the best on her case. He confirmed my suspicions and gave me four options. The first was humane euthanasia, the second, palliative care with antibiotics, but a huge risk of sepsis. Third a conservative approach that gets the abscess behind the eye by taking the teeth out that caused it and going up through the mouth and packing that space with antibiotics and a prayer that the abscess doesn’t come back, downside was a higher risk of recurrence. The fourth and gold standard approach (that the doctor specialized in) would be getting a ct scan to get an idea of how bad the infection was and then doing a zygomatic arch resection to directly address the abscess. It would also tell us how bad her dental disease was and if she would need teeth pulled. He told me the risks: potentially losing her eye, uncontrolled bleeding, and a small percentage of reoccurrence. All of which he told me was rare in his experience. It seemed like an aggressive approach but I wanted to give her the best chance of a pain free life, so I chose the expensive gold standard approach.
Her CT confirmed she had severe dental disease with several teeth that would need to be pulled and a large abscess behind her eye. Doctor seemed confident/guarded about her chances and sent me home with meds for pain and we scheduled surgery.
Yesterday (Day of surgery) I got the worst call. Doctor told me that the surgery was going great and he was feeling super confident she was going to make it and then she started bleeding and they couldn’t stop it and she arrested on the table.
Just like that, she’s gone and I feel so many conflicting emotions and just devastated. I know rationally this was the best option, it would have given her the best chance, she was just unfortunately apart of small percentage. I do not in any way blame the doctor. I have seen first hand that sometimes things just go wrong in surgery and you can do everything right and things can still go wrong and the doctor has to carry that and it’s awful. But being on the other side is also awful, because I feel responsible and guilt I wasn’t there. What if I had done the conservative approach? Would my baby be home with me right now? I know with time I will not regret anything because again rationally I was giving her the best chance, it was called the “gold standard approach” for a reason- and man was it expensive, but she was worth every penny. I would’ve gone in debt for her. She deserved a chance.
Attaching photos. She had these beautiful blue eyes. Literally the prettiest bunny I’ve ever seen. Last photo is a few days ago. She was so brave despite everything life had thrown at her. Wish our time hadn’t been so short, I hope she knew how much she was loved.
by Ok-Professional8521