[Dailydrool] Clogged Tear Duct

[Kay, Nancy K *HS]

Frank the Tank had a clogged tear duct when he was fairly young, less than a year old. It looked (still looks) just as  you describe, like a bump on his nose, right below the inside corner of his eye. We took him to a new-to-us vet (we had just moved), and the vet wanted to do surgery even though he didn't know what it was. We decided we didn't like the sound of that, too many unknowns and the vet seemed pretty inexperienced, so we drove him to our old vet who's now an hour away, but we trust them. They thought it was a bad tooth, and scheduled him with a doggy dentist who makes the rounds and does tooth extractions at the local vets. The dentist took one look and said it was a clogged tear duct instead of a tooth.

Then they sent us to a doggy ophthalmologist/eye surgeon in Richmond, a couple of hours from here. Dr Blair was great, did surgery that opened up the duct and said the bone had grown around the bulging duct which had apparently been that way since Frank was a baby, and that Frank would always have the bump on his nose. He does, here's a link to a recent photo.

http://people.virginia.edu/~nkk3u/FranksBump.gif

We went ahead with the surgery to make sure it wasn't something terrible, and to try to make sure the tear duct would still function as it should. The surgery itself went easily, and the recovery was trivial...seems to me it cost around $500. Frank has been fine in the 5 years since the surgery, no issues except that people ask "What is that bump on his nose ??"

Nancy, owned by Frank the Tank, and Tina the Sock-and-Underwear-Stealer