Bite Wound, Hole in Face

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Sep 25, 2018 11:09 pm


Has she been really gassy previously? I think keeping an eye on her and reading up on bloat (have some simethicone on hand) might be a good idea. Hopefully this will not be a problem. That the poops looked normal is a good thing. Antibiotics can affect the intestinal flora causing an overgrowth of bacteria (which can cause gas). Make sure she eats lots of hay.

GreysGuineaPigs

Post   » Wed Sep 26, 2018 1:50 am


Thanks, Lynx. She's never been gassy before that I've ever noticed, and definitely not like this. I put a little emergency kit together for them a while back, after being caught off-guard by their previous health issues, and I luckily put some simethicone in it just in case. I'm just not 100% sure how to know it's the right time to give it to her. I'm worried I'll either give it to her when she doesn't need it or I'll miss the signs and be too late getting it to her. Knock on wood, I've never had to deal with bloat with the girls before, so anything odd in their GI habits absolutely terrifies me. I've read a few bloat horror stories on different websites where they didn't catch the anorexia soon enough, and that's my biggest fear. She's has been fortunate enough to not to have had any antibiotics recently, so I don't know what has brought this on. I'm hoping it was just a piece of lettuce not agreeing with her or something and it passes on its own here soon. Since last night she's been on a hay and pellets only diet just in case it is the veggies acting up.

Another weird thing...tonight she kept dropping cecal poops and not eating them, I'd estimate about 10 of them. At first, I thought she was having really runny poos until I realized they were greener and extra stinky...then I knew for sure because she made a circle around the cage and came back and ate them off the fleece before I could get them cleaned up (sorry for the gross visual). After that, she went back to eating them as she normally does. It was like she just forgot that she was supposed to eat them for a minute.

I just felt her tummy a minute ago, and it felt very hard at first, but after she relaxed it felt fine, soft and squishy. It was as if she had tensed it up when I first touched it. I don't even know what's up with her tonight lol.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Sep 26, 2018 10:44 am


Very interesting about the cecal poops. I would guess either eating too much rich food or, much more likely, that it is painful or uncomfortable for her to reach back and get them.

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Wed Sep 26, 2018 10:53 am


Don't clean them up -- let her eat them. That's what they're supposed to do.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Sep 26, 2018 5:23 pm


Big ditto! I should have mentioned that. At least give her the opportunity to do so and hopefully she will before they become mashed poops.

GreysGuineaPigs

Post   » Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:31 pm


Thanks for the tips! Now that I know she's going to eat them and not just walk through them, I've been leaving them alone. She's done it a couple times today where she left them on the fleece for a bit and came back later, but other than that she's been doing really well! The gassiness has finally eased up too, thank goodness.

GPIG

Post   » Thu Sep 27, 2018 1:20 am


I wonder if that she had so many at once and that being out of the ordinary the reason she didn't ingest as usual and wanted to check it out before chowing down?

GreysGuineaPigs

Post   » Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:04 am


Aaaannnndd... I wasn't so lucky.

Monday night, I noticed Maggie's poos were very small, less than half their normal size. They were also very odd shaped, almost like a cone shape. Her stomach was distended, but not hard. She was clearly in pain when her stomach was palpated. I went ahead and gave her a dose of simethicone around 8 pm. By midnight this morning, her poos were about 1/8 of an inch long, slimy, and connected to each other by a string of mucus-like substance. She refused to drink but would eat hay and veggies. Even veggies did not excite her as they normally do. By 6 am she was still peeing but had not had another bowel movement since her weird-mucus poos at midnight. I called the vet when they opened, and they got me in for a late-morning appointment (around 10). On the way to the vet, she finally had a bowel movement for the first time since midnight, and, no exaggeration, she had at least 30 poos in her carrier. They were about half their normal size and tinged with a yellowish/green hue, but they had a good consistency.

The vet was not able to run x-rays, and he was the only vet within 200 miles that saw guinea pigs and could get me in. Since her stomach seemed to have started moving again and she was eating, he only gave her a bag of lactated ringers SQ, told me to continue simethicone, and referred us to a veterinarian that would be able to do more diagnostic testing and better treatment. However, the vet cannot get me in until Saturday, which worries me. I gave her another dose of the simethicone at 4 pm and will give another in an hour (midnight) and I'll do everything I can to try to help her until then.

Maggie seems to be doing a lot better tonight; she's eating hay, drinking (finally!!!!), and eating a LOT of poo...she has eaten many, many poos, but has not left ANY on her fleece. She's eaten every poo she's produced within the past 13 hours. Should this concern me as well as her other issues? Is this indicative of something else to look out for?

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:26 am


We have noticed that some ill pigs eat their poos. I expect she feels they have some nutritional value for her. So glad you are on top of this and so observant. I hope she stabilizes.

GreysGuineaPigs

Post   » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:31 pm


Thank you, Lynx.

The vet's office that looked at Maggie yesterday just called to see if I got her an exotic vet appointment for today. I told them that I wasn't able to get scheduled until Saturday. He asked if Maggie was drinking, and I explained that she started occasionally drinking about 15 hours ago, after over 24 hours of not drinking at all and having an entire bag of Lactated Ringer's injected SQ yesterday. In the last 15 hours, she has drunk around 2 oz, from my estimate of the water bottle's change in level. He wants her to come in tomorrow for another round of LR.

My immediate concern is overhydration. I've read about electrolyte imbalances, alkalosis, respiratory effects, and other common problems associated with administering too much fluid. He did administer the entire 250 mL bag of LR SQ in one go yesterday, which seemed excessive to me for one infusion. However, a lot of the liquid did leak out once the needle had been removed, so she did not retain the entire 250 mL.

Here is the info I have: Maggie is 0.95 kg, and she had any change in weight. She refused to drink for around 24 hours (the LR was administered about 10 hours after refusal began, and she began drinking about 14 hours after the infusion), and she has still only consumed about 2 oz in the past 15 hours. She has never decreased urination, even when she was refusing water. In fact, she was peeing a bit more than normal, which is odd for how dehydrated she should have been. She is very lethargic; she has spent most of the past couple of days lying stretched out, seemingly comfortable, and unmoving for hours at a time. This has led to her peeing on the fleece in the same spot and lying on it; eventually, it starts getting soaked and she's just laying there on the damp fleece, which I worry will cause its own problems. When I do notice the spot she's lying on is damp, I rotate the fleece around so she has a clean spot to lay on.

If I could be more assured that she is truly still dehydrated, I would be sure of a decision. However, I can't tell if her poos are dry because she's eating them before I can see them, her crazy amount of thick, long hair makes the scruff test very difficult, and I'm not sure of many other ways to test her level of hydration. Without being sure about the extent to which she is dehydrated, I worry that she will get overhydrated if she receives another infusion. However, I also know that fluid can greatly help her GI issues and increase her appetite.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is there a way for me to determine how dehydrated she so I can better determine if she needs another round of LR injected? Also, does anyone know the safety of injecting an entire bag of LR subQ in one go, rather than breaking it into smaller rounds? Has anyone even heard of it being done? I've been trying to research it, but I can't find any cases where this is common. I know that this is also how he rehydrates kittens and cats (all the fluid at once) and apparently he has not had any problems, but we know how different guinea pigs react to meds and such compared to other species.

Sorry for the long and probably repetitive post; I appreciate all of your help and advice. With decisions like this, it always feels like I'm taking a gamble with her health and safety, and it completely wrecks my nerves. Any more information that would help make a decision would be greatly appreciated.

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:48 pm


I've had several pigs that have had sub-q injections, and none has gotten more than 60 cc at one time.

GreysGuineaPigs

Post   » Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:55 pm


Ok, that's more of the dose I thought I had read about others getting as well, but I wasn't sure if different infusion doses were given for different indications or something. That certainly explains the excessive amount of backflow and how badly the infusion seemed to hurt her.

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