Weight Loss Eri

[Mamabug]

And now her poop looks normal.

 

[ItsaZoo]

Does she shake her head, scratch her ears, or have balance problems? The problem with drops is they only treat the outer ear. If this is a middle or inner ear infection, oral antibiotics will be the only way to reach it. Sometimes even that is not enough.

Usually Baytril is not the best antibiotic for ears. Sulfatrim (bactrim) for a minimum of 2 weeks, or Orbax for a minimum of 3 weeks, are usually more effective.

Discuss this with your new vet on Wednesday.

 

[Mamabug]

No balance problems, no head tilt. She does scratch her ears sometimes. The only time I notice her shaking her head is after I give her the ear drops or when I’m feeding her Critical Care. Her ears still flap, which I didn’t notice her doing before all this started happening. The X-rays only indicated an outer ear infection. I’ll talk with the vet and ask about the possibility of it spreading though.

 

[ItsaZoo]

I hope the vet visit goes well and the new vet can figure out what’s going on. Geri’s symptoms do sound like outer ear so that is much easier to treat.

 

[Cavy]

Poor thing, it probably hurts to eat. Just warp her up in a blanket and give her the perception (I know that’s harder than it sounds). How long do you thing she has has this ear infection?

 

[Cavy]

Have you seen any eye or ear discharge? And is she still on a medication?

 

[Cavy]

Also, do you have a picture of the x ray?

Edited by bpatters:@Cavy, just so you know, you can edit your posts within 10 minutes of first posting. That way, you don't have to continue to make new posts.

 

[Mamabug]

Hey, sorry I didn’t see this until now. She is on ear drops and has been for going on two weeks. I’ll continue with that for another week. The vet wants me to decrease the Critical Care and see how she does. I decreased to twice a day. She’s 20 grams down but she’s also been in heat. When mine go into heat they lose weight and gain it back once they’re done. She’ll probably gain it back soon. She did it two weeks ago also. They all three do it. Eevee is in heat now too and if I weighed her, she would be showing a weight loss as well, so I’m not worried right now. There’s no telling how long she’s had this infection. The vet assured me that we’re ahead of it, it has not spread to the middle or inner ear and it won’t as long as I give her the drops. She said she wants to avoid oral antibiotics if possible because of how it can affect their stomach.

There has not been any discharge from her eyes and I haven’t seen any from her ears. I don’t have a picture of the X-rays. The vet that I see now was on the phone with the other vet for an hour and a half talking about Eri. The other vet said that she was able to see the ear infection due to the bones thickening, so there is no telling how long she’s had it. My vet said bones thickening is not a quick process. I’ve never had her treated for ear infections. She’s had a few URI’s in her life, two as a baby and one about six months ago. She may have gotten the ear infection from the URI earlier this year. Poor baby! The vet tried to tell me not to beat myself up, I had no way of knowing and if she hadn’t consulted with the board certified vet who is also a radiologist, she wouldn’t have known either. I still feel terrible that Eri has been dealing with this for no telling how long and have felt like a bad piggy mom.

I think/hope she is getting better. She seems to be doing better. She’s still not and of course not gaining weight. The vet is not overly concerned about her weight because she’s not underweight at all. She’s at a healthy weight where she is right now. Obviously the Critical Care isn’t really helping or hurting her. I’m going to decrease it to once a day if she continues to maintain her weight. Then I’ll cut it out altogether if she continues to maintain after that and go from there. Hopefully she’ll start to gain weight again on her own once the infection clears. If she starts losing weight again I’ll of course bring her back or see if I can get her in to see the board certified exotics vet that mine consults with. Mine is an exotics vet as well, but is more versed in rabbits. She has a lot of experience with guinea pigs but deals more with rabbits. But she keeps in touch with the board certified one on a regular basis so I feel that Eri is in good hands and wouldn’t hesitate to bring Eevee and Chai to her if they needed medical attention.

 

[ItsaZoo]

Good that you have an exotic vet with experience. The URI could definitely cause an ear infection. If there are changes in the bones in her ears, the infection is probably too deep for ear drops to reach. At least, that was my experience with Gidget.

I hope your vet can get ahead of this. It is challenging, and you would have no way of knowing the URI was causing ear issues. So you are doing everything you can and you are not a bad piggy mom.

 

[Mamabug]

UPDATE ON ERI: I stopped the ear drops and Critical Care a couple of weeks ago and she was maintaining her weight. I weighed her this past Tuesday and she had GAINED a little bit!!! She had gotten down to 920 the week before due to going into heat and this last week she weighed in at 972. She’s not where she was before all of this but hopefully she is on her way back to her normal weight. She had been in the 930’s so I’ll take it. I weighed her last night and she was hovering at 1000 grams.

Now Eevee is losing weight. I may start a thread on her. I’m calling the vet in the morning for her.

 

[Guinea Pig Papa]

UPDATE ON ERI: I stopped the ear drops and Critical Care a couple of weeks ago and she was maintaining her weight. I weighed her this past Tuesday and she had GAINED a little bit!!! She had gotten down to 920 the week before due to going into heat and this last week she weighed in at 972. She’s not where she was before all of this but hopefully she is on her way back to her normal weight. She had been in the 930’s so I’ll take it. I weighed her last night and she was hovering at 1000 grams.

Now Eevee is losing weight. I may start a thread on her. I’m calling the vet in the morning for her.

Going through this currently with Simon. Again.

His weight last Sunday morning was around 1090 grams, not bad for him. Noticed Thursday morning that he didn't eat his morning pepper slice, and weighed him. He had lost a fair bit of weight. He has had a recurring sinus infection/ear infection for awhile now, basically since I got him. It's been more prevalent this year, however.

Re started his ear drops and gave him metacam, and he has slowly started improving. His weight was down a full 100 grams since last Sunday, which is alarming indeed. He is currently hovering just over 1000 grams, and has only been supplemented with Critical Care once a day since Thursday. He actually ate a fair amount of his dinnertime veggies today which he hasn't done since Thursday. If he continues to improve he won't need an emergency vet appt.

Let us know what happens with Eevee. There's a good possibility that she now has the same infection Eri has.

 

[Mamabug]

Going through this currently with Simon. Again.

His weight last Sunday morning was around 1090 grams, not bad for him. Noticed Thursday morning that he didn't eat his morning pepper slice, and weighed him. He had lost a fair bit of weight. He has had a recurring sinus infection/ear infection for awhile now, basically since I got him. It's been more prevalent this year, however.

Re started his ear drops and gave him metacam, and he has slowly started improving. His weight was down a full 100 grams since last Sunday, which is alarming indeed. He is currently hovering just over 1000 grams, and has only been supplemented with Critical Care once a day since Thursday. He actually ate a fair amount of his dinnertime veggies today which he hasn't done since Thursday. If he continues to improve he won't need an emergency vet appt.

Let us know what happens with Eevee. There's a good possibility that she now has the same infection Eri has.

I will. I hope Simon keeps getting better. These little guys sure do have a way of stealing a big chunk of our hearts.

 

[Guinea Pig Papa]

I will. I hope Simon keeps getting better. These little guys sure do have a way of stealing a big chunk of our hearts.

I just fed him Critical Care again. He ate it willingly this time for the most part, so that's a positive sign. He's gonna be fine.

Hope things go well for both of your girls !

 

[ItsaZoo]

I hope both of you get the ear infections under control. I struggled with Gidget and her chronic infections. The specialist I saw said smaller pigs have more ear infections and are more likely to have ear canals that are not completely formed.

She recommended sedating and irrigating the ears to remove the infection, then giving an oral antibiotic that treats bone infections. The infection can be so deep in the ear canal that drops and standard antibiotics won’t completely clear it up.

 

[Mamabug]

Eri is doing well. She has gained some more weight and is only 40 grams shy of her original weight. This baby had me worried for months!

Eevee had gut stasis or was on her way to having it. She is also doing well, is eating, screaming at me demanding food, and has gained most of her weight back. The blood work on Eevee didn’t show anything wrong so we don’t know what caused her gut issues. She’s off her meds and off the Critical Care. She’s ok now though, so I’m happy.

 

[ItsaZoo]

Such good news! Thank you for the update!

 

[Mamabug]

So I took all three girls to the board certified vet Tuesday. Eevee and Eri have had ongoing issues. Eevee, it turns out, fractured her tooth and it caused an abscess on her face. The vet either removed or shaved down that tooth, which hasn’t grown back yet. It is trying to come back but it hasn’t. She got diarrhea which we thought was from the antibiotic to treat the abscess. Ended up being coccidia and we treated all three of them. I had their poop rechecked last week and they tested negative, so they are fine on that front. The abscess has been healed for a month or so.

Eri had started losing weight last month. Still don’t know why. I had them both on Critical Care and they both started gaining weight again. Eevee and Eri were both rumble strutting for about two weeks. It was probably stress related with Eevee, and with her being the dominant pig, she was trying to assert her dominance, letting the other two know that she may have had some health problems, but she is still in charge.

On Tuesday, Eevee and Chai were given a clean bill of health. Chai has been fine throughout all of this. I just figured I’d let this other vet look at her and make sure everything was okay with her.

We figured out why Eri would sometimes bleed during her heat cycle. The vet found the ever elusive ovarian cyst. No vets have been able to find one in the past. My regular vet, to be fair, said that while she couldn’t see one due to the amount of gas, she couldn’t rule it out either.

Eri started showing symptoms of pain yesterday. Off and on fluffing up, screaming at Chai if Chai got in her personal space and she’s lost a little weight. Not enough to panic, but with the fluffing it’s a concern. I think it’s gas and it could be related to the ovarian cyst. The other vet told me we wouldn’t jump into spaying, we could try draining it first. Eri wasn’t showing signs of it bothering her then so she didn’t feel the need to do anything then. So of course she’s acting like she’s in pain now. I asked Eri why she didn’t do this when the vet was examining her. Now I’m waiting to hear back from my regular vet to see what she thinks I should do. I’ve given her mylicon for gas pain and she acts like she’s better when I let her explore my daughter’s room. She’s eating and drinking, but mostly lays around in one of the beds.

 

[Guinea Pig Papa]

I do hope you get this sorted out for her. Sick and pigs in pain are just heart wrenching. Do keep us updated, please, and best wishes for her and you.

 

[Mamabug]

I heard back from my vet. She consulted with the board certified vet and she said to give her metacam for a week and see if that resolves it and allows her to cycle it off. She also said that the mylicon drops are fine to give to her. The other option is to aspirate it. I hope it helps. She acts just fine when she’s turned loose in the bedroom. I need to get her out and just let her walk around because that does seem to help for whatever reason.

 

[Mamabug]

So I’m back again. Eri did go into heat around the 16th but it was kind of half-hearted. She is acting like she is in pain but trying to hide it. She’s lost a little weight but not enough to panic about yet. Her poops were a bit small today. I gave her some metacam this morning in the hopes of making her feel better and maybe she’ll want to eat more. She was munching on hay a little while ago when I checked on her.

I need some advice here. I don’t know for a fact that the ovarian cyst is causing her pain but the vet did indicate that it is a big one. My daughter and I are both not wanting to have her spayed due to the risks. I know that it would be a permanent solution, but we’re afraid that we would lose her in the process. Cost is an issue somewhat, but risk is the biggest issue. But my worry about drainage or hormone injections or implants is that they won’t work. The cyst will fill back up, or the hormones won’t do a thing to help her. I’m part of a group on Facebook and they are all “get her spayed”, but they weren’t really much help. I’m asking for personal experience. Did anyone here have a cyst drainage done on their pigs? Hormones? Spay? What was the outcome? I don’t want to put her through drainage or hormones only to end up having no choice but to get her spayed. Then lose her.

I will have the board certified exotics vet do the spay if we end up going that route. My vet actually recommended that I have her do it if we went through with spaying.

I don’t know what to do here. I love my Eri very much. I’m afraid that any decision I make will be the wrong one and I’ll lose her. Then I will blame myself. These three guinea pigs are actually my daughter’s pets, but Eri has chosen me as her human. She is my buddy. I want her to live to be a little old lady that screams at me for watermelon every summer. She is three years old if that helps any.

I’ve only had one other guinea pig have an ovarian cyst and she had all of the symptoms. Hair loss, pear shaped body, crusted nipples, a bit hormonal. I had it drained when she was five and the vet said that it was a small cyst. She was just fine and I didn’t have to have anything else done to her. She died at age seven. Eri doesn’t have any of those symptoms.