This Week In Chaos: Tangent Edition

We are still waiting for the dreamy guinea pig life the internet promised us. We’re starting to wonder if it can possibly be achieved. This last week should have been easy. Yes, we had two injured piggies from a blowout fight, but they both survived it. And then as soon as we got them home, Tangent knocked out his other front tooth trying to attack Meander through the divider, but within a couple of days we had them relatively calm, separated, and we were on track with dosing their meds and nursing them back to recovery. Not much else can go wrong, right?

And then one morning, suddenly Tangent started making some strange noises. At first we thought he was choking, which we’ve already experienced. But it was immediately clear this wasn’t the same thing. Something was wrong with his nose, and he obviously couldn’t breathe. There was goop and bubbles coming out of his nose and he was making the most dreadful gasping noises that kept getting worse and worse.

Knowing this was out of our league, we consulted our vet who thankfully had us bring him straight in, and they zoomed him to the back room. They were able to stabilize him so that he seemed generally ok. The vet asked to do x-rays as she was a bit puzzled as to what might have caused this episode. It was eerily similar to the same thing that happened when he was being treated by her right after the big fight, but there was no obvious reason why. We readily agreed.

During the wait, we learned that both of his newly grown in teeth were firmly attached, and that he remained stable, all great news. But the x-ray showed something truly weird. Apparently, probably during the initial fight, he bit Meander with such murderpig ferocity that he fractured his palatal plate. The palatal plate, we learned, is basically the roof of the mouth. Ow.

As we understand it, there are a lot of problems with having a fractured roof of the mouth, especially for a guinea pig. Aside from causing a lot of pain, the fracture itself can create an opening between the mouth and the nasal cavities, letting through all sorts of things that have no business being there, which can lead to many problems, from malnutrition to infection to pneumonia. Guinea pigs only breathe through their noses, so anything causing problems in the nasal area is not good.

Because Tangent had been on anti-inflammatory pain meds that had just run out a couple of days prior, we think it was keeping the symptoms of the fracture at bay. Probably not a coincidence that he had such a terrible episode a day or so after those meds were stopped. We came home with more and we’re hopeful that will help to prevent any other bad breathing problems while the fracture heals.

Our vet let us know that if he does have another incident, there is not a lot that can be done, and unfortunately we should be prepared that it could end in the worst possible outcome. We now own an infant nose aspirator, and we’re keeping an incredibly close eye on him and listening for sounds of breathing problems with our emergency kit close at hand. He has had two more minor incidents, which both seemed to quickly resolve without our intervention.

Tangent was scheduled to be neutered this week - the second time we have had him scheduled, and the second time an urgent situation has derailed it. We even had a cute little girlfriend lined up for him for after he recovered. This is no longer possible until the fracture in his mouth heals. All plans for the future are on hold until the fracture heals.

After a chat with the vet, we decided that having Meander and Tangent side by side was not an ideal solution since they both still seemed rather irritated at each other. We got in contact with the rescue and arranged to return Meander, where we are hopeful he can get acquainted with some piggies who are nicer to him and find a happy life.

This leaves us with only Tangent for the time being, and more questions than answers about where we go from here. For now, we focus on the next six weeks. Tangent has survived a brawl, knocked both his front teeth out, and fractured his own palate. At this point, the T2 nickname feels more earned than ever. He'll be back. Probably causing trouble.