Ellie’s Dental Developments

The other day my husband and I noticed that Ellie’s canines were looking quite short, so we decided to set up an appointment with our vet to find out if she needed anything to be done.

Ellie

Less than five minutes after our vet had walked in, our suspicions had been confirmed: Ellie’s canines will need to be removed.

To be honest, we were prepared for this. She began chipping them early on, and considering all of her daily adventures, tumbles, and head bonks on the floor, I’m honestly surprised that her teeth aren’t worse off than they are.

Regardless, we want our little girl to be healthy, and removing her canines is the best way to go about it.

When it comes to chipped teeth, there are many options available depending on the situation.

Some chips don’t require any action since they aren’t bad enough to reveal the root and nerves. CG has a few of these, and thank goodness, they haven’t worsened.

Sometimes, depending on how the tooth is chipped and how the chip occurred, they can simply cap the tooth so the root is not exposed. In other situations, a root canal is performed. It keeps the tooth intact, but deadens the tooth so it won’t hurt or get infected.

Unfortunately, those aren’t great options for us, because no matter how we try, Ellie’s most likely going to continue chipping her teeth. We certainly wouldn’t want her to chip off a cap, and even if she had a root canal, she’d eventually be left with sharp nubs. And we certainly don’t want that.

Right now, her teeth are still healthy — even though the root is exposed, which presents us with a few options and problems:

1) We have the healthy teeth removed now. The benefit to this is that we get them out before they get infected, which they will eventually. Unfortunately, extracting healthy teeth is quite an ordeal, and will be more painful and require a longer time to heal.

2) We wait until the teeth become infected, then have them removed. I flinch at this option because I certainly don’t want Ellie to go through any pain that we can prevent (like a tooth infection), yet, once the tooth is removed, it becomes much easier to extract, which speeds up the healing time.

Either way, we’re lucky because she won’t have to stay overnight at the hospital. She will have to receive anesthesia, but that shouldn’t be too much of a concern. That was a big relief to me, and I know it’ll be a big relief to her, when the time comes.

We’re currently leaning toward one option, but we’re also waiting to receive a cost of surgery estimate from our vet. Goodness knows that will play a big part in our decision, too.

So there we are — facing another big experience with our little CH girl. But to be honest, I’m not too phased by it. Such is life with cerebellar hypoplasia.