Kathryn Kawazoe
Thanks for your articles, Dr. Falconer. This one on dental issues and the next on antibiotics re dental surgery is especially timely, as Mola, my 14-yr-old cattle dog-sharpei mix (? we may never really know...) has an upper canine that has become almost completely covered by gum tissue after 5 months. He has always been the youngest-seeming old dog I've ever known, but this past summer I noticed he wasn't quite himself. He had a coughing episode one day, at which point I had a look and saw that his gum had begun to swell up around that tooth.
I knew he needed dental cleaning, but I didn't know his tooth was that in-need-of-attn, as he had "bad" teeth when he came to me almost 11 years ago. I found out at a recent vet visit (in order to find out more about dental options for his increasingly swollen gum) that he has a grade 3 or 4 out of 6 heart murmur (never been noticed before by any vet), so he has to see the cardiologist before he can be put under for X-rays and any work by the dental specialist (we went in Nov to Dr. Redman in San Antonio who used to come to AVES here in Austin once a wk; if you would recommend a different dentist here in Aus, please let me know). He has the cough that seems is common in animals with heart issues, and he coughed for the 1st time in a while and threw up (apparently from the cough) a few days ago. That nausea has been lingering since, for which I've been giving him Nux Vomica (seems to help). Are there other remedies you'd recommend for this? He's air/fire constitution, so is a mover/shaker by nature, would prefer to be looking for something to chase every waking moment... up until recently with this tooth/heart condition/s that are clearly making him much more "tired".
The cardiologist doesn't have an opening until March (!), and Mo's vitality seems to be dropping relatively quickly - I know that the sooner we can find out what's up with his tooth and extract it, the better, but I don't know what else to do at this point other than use remedies to help with symptoms/imbalances and get him on the immune support you recommend.
I've had a fear that the rotten tooth, which his body clearly wants to absorb up, thus inflammation, will end up causing cancer in the bone nearby... Goes right along with this article. Or I'd been thinking that the tooth issue might be causing/contributing to the heart issue. But then maybe not after reading the reference in your recent post to dental bacteria not contributing to disease in areas farther away...
I know I need to focus on getting him in the best shape, systemically, for any pending surgery he'll need. But I'm also afraid the cardiologist is going to want to put him on standard "heard meds", which I have no idea about, so don't know if any of those actually make it "safe" for him to be put under --or cause side effects that would make it less safe.! Being one who avoids allopathic meds, I don't really feel like there's any drug that's going to necessarily make it safer for him to be put under. Do you have any recs on this, doc? Or know of specific heart drugs to avoid/use that would help Mo to endure a successful dental surgery/tooth extraction?
Thanks for keeping us focused on the facts, Dr. Falconer, and for bringing this community of animal-lovers together to share info!
~kathryn
Austin, TX