Need Some Advice!

[trnreptiles]

This is gonna be a long post, since there's a lot to explain here.

My ball python, Butters, has been dealing with mouth issues for the past half year now. She first got a small case of mouth rot, which I saw a vet for (Dr. Butler) and it was treated with antibiotics. Then another issue popped up, where her jaw and throat started swelling. Butler said it wasn't anything to worry about, but it didn't go away and so I decided to try a different vet.

After asking around and doing some research, I came to the conclusion of suspecting it as a mouth infection/abscess due to a broken tooth/teeth. She did smack her jaw into the side of her tub once, since she was hanging out of the tub when I tossed a rat in for her. She turned around to strike at it, but hit the tub instead of the rat.

I took her to a different vet (Dr. Turpen) for it, and she's been to this clinic for it several times now, first having an incision made on her neck to drain any fluids in there since it was swollen, but it didn't seem to fix the issue.
Then we took her in to a different vet (Dr. Kilbane) at the same clinic, who said the infection was in her jaw area (which would be more in line with my suspicions being tooth-related) and had me do treatment with an oral rinse and medication, on top of some injectable antibiotics.
The last time we went in, he concluded that he thinks the infection is gone and that the lumps that are left are simply scar tissue. He also stated he wanted to try and get her to eat. Why, I have no idea. She's only been off food for a month or so (I stopped feeding her since these treatments were daily, I didn't want to risk regurgitation) but she's a 2600 gram snake and hasn't lost any significant weight. She's also still pretty chunky!

His thoughts were to offer her food every other day, while also giving her yet another antibiotic given orally that is also supposed to boost appetite.
I decided NOT to follow those instructions per advice given to me by other breeders on both Instagram and the MM forums. It would only cause her more stress, and pumping her full of antibiotics won't do any good either. I'll continue offering her food every 7-10 days instead, and she should eventually go back on food.

I've been told that I should find a different vet because of this, but I'd rather avoid that if I can as the closest registered exotics vet I could find on the ARAV website is a 2 hour drive away from me. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if it weren't for my boyfriend's work schedule. He works nights, and can't just take a day off either sadly, they're very strict on that.

Dr. Kilbane has been recommended to me by other people in the area, and I've been told he's very open to suggestions on treatment and learning new things. He's been pretty open to me offering my ideas and suggestions to what the issue could be.
He was also super nice and didn't charge us for the last visit or medication, so that's definitely a plus for me.

I'm confident if I can figure out what should be done next, I can present that information to him and see if he's willing to take that route.
I had one person suggest that Butters needs the scar tissue removed and the area cleaned out, but I'm not 100% on that either.
Just a lot of conflicting information that is making me rather stressed, aha.

If there's anything I'm missing, please don't hesitate to ask!

I will add pictures of her here shortly, going to do it via tapatalk since it would be a hassle to do via computer.
EDIT: Lots of pics incoming!

This was back before we took her in to see Dr. Turpen/Dr. Kilbane:


The worst of her throat swelling:



And then some recent pictures:



The swelling in the jaw area has gone down quite a bit, but the lumps are still there.
She does seem to be drinking quite a bit of water too.

Her current body condition:


If any additional pictures would help just let me know!