It's a rough life...

PENELOPE’S STORY
…or how to fight an abscess and win
(originally published by the Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue Newsletter...November 2000)

I was born in Rochester New York, to pedigreed mini-lop bunnies. At the tender age of 8 weeks, some humans took me from my mother and put me in a glass box. Soon after that, some different humans rescued me from the glass box and took me to a better place…a place with carpet and hay and bananas and a Minxy D. Rabbit…but Minxy is another story for another time.

About 2 months later, one of my humans, we call her "the slave" discovered I had a bad thing on my beautiful face. It was sort of crusty looking. She was worried, so she took me to a doctor. This doctor was a total moron and thought rabbits were a small version of dog. Can you believe it? Some humans should just be stuck in a glass box…

Fortunately, the slave realized she had picked a bad vet and took me to someone new two weeks later. By this time, the lump in my cheek had swelled to the size of a cherry tomato. This doctor knew about one percent more than the other one. He told the slave I had an abscess, an infection, inside my cheek. He decided to keep me there overnight and do surgery to take it out.

Next thing I knew I had stitches all over the side of my face with a hole left open and the doctor was telling the slave to "flush the incision site." Of course, being a human, she did not ask for a better explanation and so she spent the next 2 weeks soaking my face with a syringe-full of antiseptic stuff. Did absolutely no good whatsoever and in fact made me really really mad.

At the same time, she was supposed to be giving me some nasty medicine. I caught on really early that this was a bad thing…worse than the thing in my face. I spat it out as often as I could. Sometimes I’d hold it in my mouth until she turned around then I left it on the floor for Minxy to dispose of properly. We have special bio-hazard containers for that sort of thing. Don’t tell the slave. She still thinks I took my medicine like a good little bunny.

Best part about the medicine was watching all the creative ways the slave used to try and trick me into taking it. Minxy and I would make wagers on what ingenious plan she’d try next. She mixed it with basil, she put it inside raisins, she mashed it and mixed it with banana. None of these feeble attempts fooled me, but at least the efforts kept her off the streets and gave her something to do.

Oh, by the way, the slave was smart enough to ask the doctors to test the junk in my face to see if they could find out what it was. None of the tests ever showed anything. Only thing they succeeded in doing was costing more green paper things. That did not make the sub-slave very happy, but he loves me so he says it’s all okay, no matter how many green paper things it takes to make me happy and healthy.

So for two weeks or so the slave sprayed my face and stuffed meds in me. I was not a happy camper. What I did not know was that worse things were yet to come. She took me back to the moron vet and he proceeded to remove the stitches from my face. This was not pleasant. When they put them in at least I was asleep and didn’t know what was going on. Even Minxy was upset by the whole thing. He told me later he wanted to bite the doctor’s wrists and eliminate him, but he was afraid his teeth were too small to finish the job.

Of course the thing came back after about 8 weeks and we had to go through the whole unpleasant mess again. I won’t bore you with all the gruesome details. Suffice it to say, the abscess came back every 8-10 weeks no matter what meds they tried. Each time it came back faster and bigger. Even when I took my meds faithfully, it didn’t make any difference. We went through two more morons, er, I mean vets, until we found one who had a clue.

This vet tried a new procedure. He implanted antibiotic beads at the incision site. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t work either. Not at all. They ended up being flushed out when the abscess came back 8 weeks later. Sucked to be me. Even worse than that, part of my cheek decided that it had had enough surgeries and decided to jump ship. Ever since then, I have to stick out my tongue all the time to close off that part of my mouth. Minx says it makes me look goofy but he loves me anyway.

Every single time I went to the doctor, Minxy came with me. He encouraged and supported me and even got sick for me. Every time I had stitches taken out, he stopped eating. It was not pleasant for any of us. And of course the stupid slave kept insisting on stuffing meds in me that didn’t work anyway.

Many more months went by and the slaves moved us to a new city which meant another new vet. More major surgery. I kept hearing about all these bunnies with abscesses in their feet who got amputations and were just fine. No such luck for me…no way to amputate my face without taking Penelope out along with it.

Like the bunch of loons they are, the slaves decided to move again. This time we moved to a place I think of as Bunny Nirvana…Dallas Texas. Here we met a terrific vet who knew where to draw the line. Instead of fooling around pretending he knew what to do, he sent us to a huge vet school where specialists looked at my face and took x-ray pictures and decided that they didn’t know anything either. They wanted to do "exploratory surgery" but my slave said no way. She thinks 8 surgeries are enough for one bunny.

So my slave pulled out the big guns and asked them to give me a kind of hard-core antibiotic medicine she’d heard about, called Chloramphenicol. I was on it for 45 days. That was about 9 months ago. I have been abscess-free since then. The vet thinks my recovery is due to the medication plus my new living arrangements. I have a very stress-free lifestyle now and I get to run and play outside with Minxy almost every day.

Of course, there is no way to know what’s going on deep inside and the abscess may still be lurking there. But for now, I am happy and content just getting to be with Minxy and not having to take any nasty meds or have my face poked prodded and flushed every day. The slave and I and Minxy agree that all that matters is that I’m okay today. We’re taking things one day at a time. For now, things are pretty great.

I wanted to share this story to give other bunnies and their slaves hope. My slave says that two years ago, around Christmas time, she thought for sure she was going to lose me. She cried and prayed and talked to me every day asking if I was going through too much. And that wasn’t the last time she thought I was a goner. Guess what? I’m still here. I am 2 ½ years old now. We didn’t think I’d make it to even 6 months. I guess my bunny guardian angel does super great work. (***EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2000. We finally lost Penelope when she was 6 years old.)