Dizzy would rather sleep in his litter-box and eliminate on a towel, so that's what we did. You can see his feeding tube hanging out of the bandage. He never bothered it. Three times a day we mixed prescription diet A/D with water, and pain medicine. Morning and evening, we added antibiotics. At noon we added Forti-Flora, a probiotic to help keep his gut working in the face of all his other troubles.
I spoke with Dr. Meadows at the University of Missouri about how to proceed next. He does all their dental stuff, plus he's the head of the Clinical Practice (i.e. "real world" medicine) faculty. He told me that when the infection seemed under control, we might wire that upper jaw back in place. We might even be able to just sew the soft tissues together to hold the bones in place.
That left upper jaw would just swing out like a gull-wing door on the DeLorean from "Back to the Future". Not good for the eye and other structures in the neighborhood. On the other hand, as long as he lay quietly and we were feeding him through the tube, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. So, we started in on the long haul of nursing care.
We talked with the owner (who had just inherited him with the house) and she was concerned about costs. We were already way over budget. She said she really would like to keep it to no more than twice what we had already spent (which was a lot). I said I would try, and we would keep her posted.
To be continued...
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