There will be blood, yours.
Pay the vet, it’s not worth the suffering.
That was certainly true for our last kitty - Li'L Iron Jaws. She would twist her own head off before opening her mouth for us - a task made even harder since she was Persian and had a flat face.
Our current Persian kitties came from a trailer park in southern Virginia. They are little slack-jawed yokels. If you flip them on their backs and rub between their eyes, their little mouths drop open. Makes it easy to give pills and give the teeth a brush now and then. I've never seen anything like it.