I had to go to the vet.

Niamh Piggyfriend here. A while ago I was not eating very well and Slave could see that my incisors were growing diagonally. A sure sign that there was a problem with my molars. She took me to see our Rodentologist, Lynn from Palace Piggies, and she trimmed my teeth but said that she thought that I might have a tooth root abscess. Eeek!!! Our retired Rodentologist was an expert with abscesses and could have dealt with this himself but Lynn said that I should go and see our vet.

While she waited for the abscess to appear, Slave had to syringe feed me. I was very good and did not mind this but eventually the day came when the trip to the vet was necessary.

I had to have an Xray. Our vet put sandbags all around me so that I would not move and spoil the image.You can see it above. It is not a very clear picture but it is the best of several that Slave took. Our vet said that it shows that I have Osteomyelitis, which causes my teeth to grow wrongly into my jaw and this could have caused the abscess, which is visible in the full size Xray but not in this little photo. This does not look much like me does it? Where is my coat?

This is what I really look like. Here I am being weighed. I only just fit on the vet's little scale but the only other one that he has is for dogs and cats and does not register very well with a little guinea on it. I do not think that any of our big boars would fit on this little one.



The vet lanced my abscess and drained a lot of horrible pus out of it. Then he flushed out the cavity with antiseptic and saline. There is no photo of this event as Slave was holding me still whilst the vet performed the procedure. You would not want to see it anyway as it was nasty and smelly. I made a lot of noise about it but then I started making a noise before he put the scalpel in. The people in the waiting room could hear me.
 

We came home with Marbocyl antibiotics, a bag of saline and a lot of syringes. Slave had to flush out the abscess with the saline every day using the little hole that the vet had made and every week we went back to the vet for him to do it better. I started eating once the abscess had been lanced and Slave was very relieved about that. So was I.

After the abscess had gone flat, I thought that I was OK but then another one came up and we had to go back to the vet and start over. Here you can see our lovely vet examining me. His name is Etienne and he comes from Belgium. He has been the Piggyfriends' vet for nearly 20 years.

Finally the day came when Etienne said that I was all mended! Hooray! There is a possibility that I might get another one so paws crossed that this does not happen. I like going to see the vet but do not want another abscess.