BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

One of our northerns has had what I thought was a slight build-up of scales on its mouth for the last week or two. During cleaning today I checked it over and found it had one eye closed shut, one halfway there and build-ups of gunk around its mouth. One hour, several cotton buds, a cup of salted water and some F10 germicidal ointment later it looks like a different lizard aside from some slight redness and swelling to the gums.
All the areas I cleaned had Lignocel fibres in the gunk so I believe it has got caught when eating etc. and little skink hasn't been able to clean it off due to the size. All our lizards are bowl fed so I'm not 100% how it got there.
I'm hoping this has just caused irritation and, at worst, a local infection but I'll have to try finding a reptile vet if it gets worse over the weekend.
All 4 of the 'baby' skinks have been moved to beech chippings today as they're too big to get stuck between teeth etc. - the big one will be switched as soon as I can get some more because I ran out.

On the plus side, I now know that Northerns have much larger teeth than our old IJ and they look to have what I'm assuming are specialist snail crushers about halfway back. Pretty cool.

For anyone that doesn't know what Lignocel is, it's similar to shredded aspen but the strands are only around 1/4 inch or so and it is dried pine. Video herehttps://youtu.be/8TVkc67geEw.

Pine is toxic to reptiles. I do not even use aspen anymore as the dust had them (and me!) constantly sneezing and caused shedding problems. No more with the use of repti-bark and similar. (Northerns and Easterns)

Update

I had to take him to the vets today as his eyes had started looking irritated again and his breathing has been laboured for the last couple of days. After being looked over he's now on a course of Baytril antibiotic, Metacam anti inflammatory and Isathal eye drops for what they believe is just a respiratory infection.
Hopefully they're right and the medicine will work, otherwise he needs an X-ray to check if it is pneumonia - I may be wrong but I don't think there's much they can do about that.

I will update again in a couple of weeks.

Final update -
After 2 weeks of antibiotics (including 1 week boarding with the vet and being nebulized with F10) his condition worsened so we had to let him go today to prevent him suffering more. It's not easy but the vet agreed it was the best thing to do.

I am sorry that there was nothing you could do. Unfortunately it happens from time to time, the best thing you can do is realize what the problem was and learn how to avoid it next time (if possible).