FOPS - Dr Jo saves the day - what a challenging case this turned out to be

We always trying to do our very best, to give our patients the ultimate in care, compassion and excellence, our clients the best care and value. A recent very difficult case shone a very bright light on the team work and dedication at our Practice. Suffice to say, without such care and sheer determination of many members of our Team, the outcome would have been different.


Bonnie - a gorgeous adult Burmese cat with really bad teeth
Presented to us was a friendly adult cat with quite nasty dental problems, a sore mouth and a loving owner. Our advice was to remove rotten sore teeth and give her pain relief and antibiotics, with a good prognosis.

We expected her to have recurrent problems with her gums, as we suspect she has had cat flu previously, which can sensitise the immune system to attack the gums unnecessarily. Certainly our normal advice is to scale, polish, extract what needs extracting and discharge with aftercare prevention techniques......

After surgery which went very well with several extractions (routine), our little Bonnie  became very distressed and started to paw at her face frantically. As she had large amounts of pain relief including full nerve blocks, I originally assumed she was feeling a tingling from the nerve block wearing off.

oh no, how could this happen?
Bonnie within a matter of minutes of recovery managed to cut her gum with her own claws, before she was protected with an Elizabethan collar and paw padding. She remained in hospital overnight, with a considerable amount of post op care from our very talented nurses. She was hand fed, and nursed to a point where she was discharged the next day. She reportedly began pawing again the following day, and wasn't eating terribly well. Her pain relief continued, and she was readmitted into hospital so we could keep a close eye on her.

Bonnie's recovery continued very well, her extraction sites healed extremely well, and her gums also healed exceptionally quickly, the whole time she was being hand fed by her mum, or our wonderful nurses on day visits to the hospital.

At the one week post op check, I examined her mouth, to find all had healed exceptionally well, and removed her collar. Assuming at that stage the nerve block must have been the complication.

My heart sank with a distressing  phone call......
That night I received a distressing call from her mum to say she had cut her gums again all of a sudden. She was frantically pawing at her face.

I met her at the hospital, she was sedated, I reapplied her collar and bandaged her paws. Pain relief continued.

With the dedication of our nurses towards Bonnie, hand feeding, grooming and loads TLC, She would have been miserable. I can't underestimate the role of such genuine loving care by our nurses.

On top of this distressing progress, we were worried there was a retained root (surgery went exceptionally well though), or some serious physiological problem.

UNTIL, and this is the awesome part; one of our Vets in her own spare time researched and found (needle in a hay stack) a very likely and perfectly described condition known in the same breed of cat -  Trigeminal nerve pain, or FOPS - FELINE ORAL PAIN SYNDROME.

It occurs in certain breeds, and can be triggered by extractions, stress, dental disease.
It actually meant we could certainly now give a prognosis and importantly treatment options.
Bonnie since is going well on further treatment.

BUT the reason for the post, is to show two things

1. Dr Jo, one of our vets, despite not being the main treating vet, was dedicated to seeing the case to a better end, to go the further step, spending a large amount of her own time to see if anything else could be done.
2. Care is a word often bandied around, but it is only REAL when it is a whole Team of vets, and support crew actively trying to make a difference, and seeing each patient as an individual.

This demonstrates why, if you are avoiding a younger, "seemingly" less experienced (although Dr Jo is well experienced!) vet, THINK AGAIN as they can be the most dedicated and keen vet to sort out unusual cases. Many older vets would simply discard the case as unusual, or not care in this way as what the Team of Vets and nurses did with Bonnie.

This is what makes Animal Doctors special and different, it is what you never see. 

It isn't something easy to market or tell people about.

 It is the core of what we are, how we do what we do. It is Animal Doctors.

As the owner and Practice Director, I am incredibly proud of the Team, their tireless care of our patients. My public thanks to Dr Johanna and our Nurses.

(many parts of the case have been omitted for brevity, reasons why she had the treatment she had etc, are so detailed it can't be included without distracting from the main reason for the post, Bonnie continues to recover well)

Stay safe
Dr Steve Rose