Dang it,

Now I'm starting to finally know what its like when I do dental
cleanings and find a tooth that  needs to come out and the owner tells
me "But they NEVER seemed to be in any pain!!!"

Last November I 'catnapped' Mischief for her yearly exam.....and
during her exam, Dr. C found a tooth that looked suspicious.  He said
it might need to come out.  I've been keeping an eye on it, so to
speak.  Even with my employee discount, and my credit card debt and
bills to pay, a dental/x-rays/extraction is a little out of my league.

Well, this past week, I just started a second job.  And I've been
doing more home pet care for clients.  I'm currently helping a lady
give Sub-cutaneous fluids to an 18 year old cat three times a week.

This extra income might just be enough to take care of Mischief.

Cause I checked her mouth tonight, and her suspicious tooth is clearly
a FORL

Known as a Feline Oral Resorptive Lesion, aka a cavity....

They usually start as a neck lesion, or a red patch at the gumline.
They usually will eat away at the tooth root and they tend to be VERY
painful.  I've taken dental x-rays of teeth looking like this and tend
to look at pictures of teeth with the roots completely eaten away.

Yet i know from experience and from the classroom that animals are
EXPERTS at hiding pain.  If they don't eat, they die, so they will
keep eating through any pain.

In Mischief's case, that's a certainty, and if I wasn't a vet tech, I
would NEVER have noticed.  She has still been the GLUTTON she is,
scarfing down her food and even hurking it up again on the carpet.
Now I KNOW how expert they are and can now completely know how the
clients feel.

I don't really have the money, yet, but in the past week or so I've
made enough to help cover it.  It sucks, cause it's all the newly
earned spare cash I've earned that I was gonna put in the bank.

But I know these are painful and I can't bear to have MIschief be in
pain.  But she is acting like there's NOTHING wrong.  She is still
flopping over on my desk begging for attention.  She could have a
major toothache when she eats, yet she STILL is scarfing down her food
like nothing is wrong.  This is the SAME little minx that helped
herself to my chicken sandwich the other day........

I have the next few days off and then back to work on Friday to work a
double shift.  Ten hours at the vet clinic and then the night shift at
the new job.  (I'm working dispatch for a security company)

I'm gonna call and see if I can squeeze in Mischief on Friday for a
dental cleaning and extraction.  That also means pre-anesthetic
bloodwork, which I might need to do the same day.  Oh she's gonna LOVE
this.......  Since I know the tooth needs to come out, I'm gonna try
to not have to do dental x-rays.  But as I tell my clients, "We never
really know until we get in there and can take a real good look.

On the flip side, as an RVT, I'm allowed to extract teeth.  So not
only will I probably going to be putting in her IV catheter, giving
her drugs, and cleaning her teeth but i'll probably be pulling out the
bad tooth.  And THEN i'll have to give her anti-biotics and pain
meds.  Oh she's gonna be SOOOOO mad at me.....

Please purrs for her tooth.  And pray that there's no more than ONE
tooth that needs to come out.  And purrs for my bank account too.

Kristi