This post is basically cry for help. Out of a sudden my guinea pig Pompon (female - 5,5 years) started to show weird symptoms out of the sudden. Her left rear leg became stiff/paralyzed - she holds it erect forward like she couldn't bend it or stand on it. At more or less the same time her right hind leg got curved in a weird way for no apparent reason. She hardly moves and when she does (rarely) she holds her back abnormally high and happen to fall on her left side. She rather jumps with her hind legs than walks/runs using them. Additionally she has a diarrhea on irregular basis - sometimes poop is a little wet but formed well, a little later it's in a form of big blob.
Vets are helpless - we did X-ray spine and loins but to no avail, everything looks very good for a guinea pig of her age. There was nothing that would explain her condition. Then we did blood test for urea and creatinine to rule out uraemia that could be the reason. And we did ruled uraemia out - results were normal so her kidneys are fine. We tried steroids and vitamin B, 2 or 3 injections (don't recall name of steroid) but nothing changed. Then we did some research and followed advice of Peter Gurney and some other vets and started injections of Calcium (substitute of Osteocare), Loxicam (local brand name of Metacam) and Nivalin (used with success in cases of myopathy). We did 2 rounds of injections and today we'll do one last round but for now we don't see any improvement.
At the moment we're completely clueless - I massage her legs twice a day and do rehabilitation by assisted swimming once a day (I hold her slightly sunk in the water to make her move legs). She moves her hind legs while swimming but it's very slow, uncoordinated and done with evident hardship.
I feed her with hay, pellets (Versele Laga) greens, veggies and occasional fruits + vitamin C 1 ml daily - she seems to be eating even more than before her illness for no apparent reason. Even started eating pellets which up until recently seemed to be invisible for her .
Maybe it's worth mentioning that couple days before it started happening she underwent spaying procedure. However she was safe and sound right after procedure and following days and there was nothing suspicious about her condition or behavior. It all started suddenly out of the blue.
It hurts me to see her like that and I want to help her badly but don't know what else I can do ;(. Vets here would really like to help and are willing to educate themselves but they just don't have the experience as guinea pigs are not that popular in Poland.
I truly count on your help or any insight about what's wrong and how it can be helped.
Below are pictures that I took today and a movie - you can see how it all looks like.
[video=youtube;b-0LRsDjmTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-0LRsDjmTo[/video]
Vets are helpless - we did X-ray spine and loins but to no avail, everything looks very good for a guinea pig of her age. There was nothing that would explain her condition. Then we did blood test for urea and creatinine to rule out uraemia that could be the reason. And we did ruled uraemia out - results were normal so her kidneys are fine. We tried steroids and vitamin B, 2 or 3 injections (don't recall name of steroid) but nothing changed. Then we did some research and followed advice of Peter Gurney and some other vets and started injections of Calcium (substitute of Osteocare), Loxicam (local brand name of Metacam) and Nivalin (used with success in cases of myopathy). We did 2 rounds of injections and today we'll do one last round but for now we don't see any improvement.
At the moment we're completely clueless - I massage her legs twice a day and do rehabilitation by assisted swimming once a day (I hold her slightly sunk in the water to make her move legs). She moves her hind legs while swimming but it's very slow, uncoordinated and done with evident hardship.
I feed her with hay, pellets (Versele Laga) greens, veggies and occasional fruits + vitamin C 1 ml daily - she seems to be eating even more than before her illness for no apparent reason. Even started eating pellets which up until recently seemed to be invisible for her .
Maybe it's worth mentioning that couple days before it started happening she underwent spaying procedure. However she was safe and sound right after procedure and following days and there was nothing suspicious about her condition or behavior. It all started suddenly out of the blue.
It hurts me to see her like that and I want to help her badly but don't know what else I can do ;(. Vets here would really like to help and are willing to educate themselves but they just don't have the experience as guinea pigs are not that popular in Poland.
I truly count on your help or any insight about what's wrong and how it can be helped.
Below are pictures that I took today and a movie - you can see how it all looks like.
[video=youtube;b-0LRsDjmTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-0LRsDjmTo[/video]