How to Cope When Your Rabbit Has an Abscess - Part 1 - Teeny's tips

Hi, my name is Teeny. And I want to share my experience of living with a rabbit with abscess with you. This is Spice, he's coming to eight years old right now. He's always been relatively healthy until about a couple weeks ago, I realise he wasn't eating as well. Upon close inspection, I realize he had two large lumps on the right side of his cheek. I knew instantly he had abscess. I've heard so many horror stories about rabbits having abscess, that it's difficult to treat and the trauma that the rabbit owner and the rabbit have to undergo. Rabbit abscesses are one of the most commonly seen disorders in rabbits. Basically an abscess is a collection of pus which is a sign of underlying disease. The texture of the pus is really thick like toothpaste which really makes it difficult to drain and treat. I try to make life as comfortable for Spice as possible. I will try to make his food very palatable, for his vegetables, I would cut it until it's mini, mini bits and try to mix it with things that he really, really loves like papaya and grape. But in the last few days, Spice's abscess rapidly grew bigger and I could see that it was affecting his way of life. He was fast losing weight and his teeth are worn down in an unnaturally slanted fashion, he was also drooling. It was then, that I know that I had to bring him to the vet, and the vet has confirmed that Spice has abscess, three in fact. He used to weigh one-point-eight kilos but now he is just one-point-two. The vet said that the abscess is so big that it was pushing into Spice's cheek and it was causing the misalignment of its teeth which made eating difficult. So she helped trim Spice's teeth which I didn't dare look. She also said that she would have to remove the abscess to investigate if she had dental problems and if she had to go to the extent of removing its teeth. As predicted, she'd advised surgery even though she did highlight that it would not be easy and Spice is a relatively old rabbit. I had heard that older rabbits have problems waking up from anesthesia and plus the fact that the abscess in rabbits, keep coming back. She also mentioned that after surgery care would be rather intensive. So I'm faced with two options, one, go home and make life as comfortable as possible for Spice or two, but wait for the abscess to grow bigger and bigger or go with surgery where Spice and I will fight it together. I chose surgery. Because I believe that Spice deserves the quality of life that he had before the abscess. I'm with him, every step of the way. Right Spice?