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Thread: Injured mouth in an 11 month old, refusing food

  1. #1
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    Default Injured mouth in an 11 month old, refusing food

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    This may not be life threatening but she is refusing to eat so I think it is. Consider me a terrible mother. I didn't notice until today.

    Saturday I bought a new stash of cashews walnuts and almonds from costco. Saturday I was giving her just walnuts, Sunday I gave her cashews and almonds and after an almond she started refusing nuts from my hand. I took a few and put them in her treats hammock and they are still there.

    Also Sunday (yesterday) afternoon during feeding time, which is done inside the cage as a habit for containing mess and letting Sterling know that the food is safe from the dogs and that she can eat in peace, I decided to close the cage door and step away. I was close by but she was out of my sight so I don't know what happened but I heard a clatter inside the cage and outside the cage on the floor and I heard my squirrel make a sound that I can only describe as "reaction to a quick burst of pain."

    Immediately I ran to the cage and found that the water bottle which is attached on the outside of the cage was knocked over onto the floor and my squirrel was at the bottom of the cage running back and forth all in a tizzy. I figured maybe one of the dogs knocked up against the cage and knocked the water bottle down and startled my squirrel and she perhaps fell down hence the cry and that the rest was just some temperamental upset that would pass as she calmed down, so I chose to leave her alone in the cage for the rest of the night, I came and checked on her several times, always petting and always offering a nut, either an almond or walnut or cashew, Every time she refused to take it.

    This continued through today and I noticed that she has been sleeping… All day. I decided this does not seem right and chose to remove Sterling from the cage and put her in my shirt, as we usually do around this time of night, and while I was petting her I felt a bump on the side of her mouth, so I inspected and I will include pictures of what I found, But suffice to say there is a scab from a puncture, likely from her own teeth, and dried blood or maybe an almond splinter(?) stuck between her top teeth, and the bottom… It's very, very swollen, swollen to the point that… Either her bottom teeth shrank or her bottom lip is so swollen that it's wrapped around the bottom teeth to the point that I had to open her mouth and actively LOOK FOR her bottom teeth. I believe the latter to be the case because inspecting it as much as Sterling would allow I was able to push the swollen bit down a little bit to locate the bottom teeth to see if there was any damage to them and found that they did not, at least the tips that were exposed, did not seem abnormal in shape or color. Didn't look snapped or splintered or otherwise broken. But I can't tell if her teeth are crooked or loose or her lip is just so swollen that it's making it appear that way or if she's deliberately holding her jaw off center.

    Her entire chin and the whole area around the bottom teeth inside and out are so swollen that when looking at her from a short distance I can see that she's not fully closing her mouth. And the front exterior appears to be slightly punctured at the lip line and a bit glossy and pus-like.

    I am worried and I don't know what really happened or what to do aside from basic first aid of cleaning it up. I don't know if she fell on her face or hurt her mouth on her water bottle or on an almond or how this could have happened to my poor baby's face.

    Please advise. How serious of an injury is this? Do I need to put her on antibiotics? Miracle nipple formula feed until it heals?

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Injured mouth in an 11 month old, refusing food

    She may just be holding her lower jaw oddly - do her teeth match up - tops and bottoms - correctly or have they been knocked off kilter? She took a hard hit to the face, poor baby.

    Get her pain under control - it is the reason she isn't eating. Get some infant ibuprophen - it is a liquid, and get us a weight on her so you can start relieving the pain.

    Just a note - a face strike like this is the most common cause of malocclusion of the teeth - hence my question above. If she has messed her teeth up so they don't meet properly the bottoms will grow too long and cause all sorts of problems - pierce the upper palate, cause starvation, etc. I don't know if that was the plan but if it is the case, she is not releasable.

  3. Serious fuzzy thank you's to CritterMom from:

    MotherOfBadgers (08-04-2020)

  4. #3
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    Default Re: Injured mouth in an 11 month old, refusing food

    She's already unrelesable

    Don't know an exact weight because my food scale only goes up to one pound and when i put her on it the thing hard clunks to the bottom. She's a bit of a chubber. So she's at least a pound.

    After posting I pulled my head out of my ass and stopped panicking completely and whipped up ab array of soft foods for her (not the best choices but better than nothing) and some fox valley in a bottle which she was super eager to drink.

    As for her teeth, before this they were aligned properly, i think. The lower alway do seem longer and it's like she has a little over bite. They dont touch when she closes, at least not tip to tip. To be honest I have clipped her lowers twice before because they just looked too long. Her bottoms never look shaved down the way her too teeth do. Looking at them now her lowers are off center to the side but i cant tell if it's due to the swelling or not. What is the solution for this and what is proper alignment and length?

    And I suppose you should just give me a one pound baby ibu solution to be on the safe side. It might not be exactly as strong as she can handle but I don't wanna risk over medicating.

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    Default Re: Injured mouth in an 11 month old, refusing food

    After looking at some pictures and reading some stuff I can say that before this her teeth were aligned properly. I can't say for sure now. Will have to see what everything looks like after this is healed. She didn't like the ibu but let me give it to her with a miracle nipple+syringe. Sprinkling a little antibiotics into her fox valley. She's eating and more active now. This morning it looked like a pimple boiled to a head, so i poked it and quite a bit of fluid drained and it shrank a bit, and 8ish hours later it appears to already be hard-scabbing, so I suppose she was developing an abscess in there. I'm keeping her out/on me. She is mostly curling up in my shirt to sleep as usual but energy lvl has increased since the other day and she does wake up to run around a bit before coming back to bed, sometimes taking the bottle, sometimes not.

    One weird thing... she has started "chewing air" -- chewing but with nothing in her mouth. I'm not sure why or what this means.

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