sheep may safely graze: a second opinion

Well, after spending hundreds upon hundreds of dollars with a vet who first thought Joelle was a reject from the Angora rabbit farm because she was a chronic Pasteurella bunny who would suffer from random abscesses her whole life and then was sure Joelle had cancer in her face and should be put to sleep -- after that, and after the vet said that the big blob of necrotic and bloody tissue left on the side of Joelle's face looked "great" (and after never returning my Tupperware container and losing the thingy that hooks Joelle's water bottle to the side of her cage)...then I went to a different veterinarian.

Different Veterinarian was very calm. Different Vet said, "This is common." He showed me that the "great" looking blob was actually only attached by a 1/4 centimeter-wide piece of skin, and the blob was longing to come off and expose the still pus-filled opening that was (still - after a week of daily treatments and two weeks of antibiotic) The Abscess. With a tiny snip that Joelle didn't even notice, the blob was off, and the Different Vet took some surgical scrub and washed out the ooky pus that had reaccumulated in the area. He made sure Joelle didn't have tooth problems that were causing the abscess. He told me the weird bite-looking wound on Joelle's back wasn't another abscess (he was right - it hasn't gotten exponentially bigger this week at all) and was more likely a insect or spider bite. He said Joelle's previous antibiotic prescription dose was based on dog and cat norms and that she needed 2.5 times as much. But no surgery. He managed to get me the antibiotic for $17.

Yes, seventeen dollars. Not hundreds and hundreds. Seventeen dollars worth of antibiotic and a couple bucks worth of antiseptic with which to wash the abscess area for the next week, and that's it. That's the full treatment.

And I asked Different Vet when I should come back for a recheck, and he said I probably wouldn't have to because Joelle should be totally fine within the next 10 days. Yes, 10 days of antibiotics. Not 6 weeks as the previous vet had prescribed.

Now, I'm not saying that the old vet was wrong necessarily. Different vets have different styles. I just think that the old vet's means of dealing with the situation left me quite uncomfortable. And Different Vet certainly instilled huge amounts of confidence in his diagnosis and confirmed all that I had read and heard from other rabbit owners about Joelle's problem. And I also know that Joelle's abscess has looked better in the past two days than it has in the past 3 weeks.

I also think that Joelle's just happy that nobody's going to poke her anymore and that she still gets to take that yummy cherry-flavored antibiotic!

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers and encouragement. I'm pretty sure Joelle's out of the woods with this abscess thing now. Hooray!

In the meantime, she's also very happy to have acquired her own throne in the bathroom after bravely conquering the terrifying Slippery Cold Tile (and then naughtily peeing all over the bath mats).