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  • ONE THREAD per pig please!
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Feet Paralysis/stiffness in one leg, disturbing curvature/contortion in another

Halski83

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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.

IMG_0256.jpgIMG_0258.jpgIMG_0261.jpgIMG_0262.jpgIMG_0265.jpg

[video=youtube;b-0LRsDjmTo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-0LRsDjmTo[/video]
 

ClemmyOddieIndy

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Was there a medical reason you spayed her?

Does her leg feel cold or warm? It's hard to tell from the pictures, but is her foot darker and purple in color or is that how it's always looked/just the way the picture looks?

Does she not have hair on her rear? Is there a lump on her rear?

Has her water intake increased at all?
 

Halski83

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Was there a medical reason you spayed her?

Does her leg feel cold or warm? It's hard to tell from the pictures, but is her foot darker and purple in color or is that how it's always looked/just the way the picture looks?

Does she not have hair on her rear? Is there a lump on her rear?

Has her water intake increased at all?

Yes, there was a medical reason we spayed her - she started scratching herself, biting herself on the leg and belly and tearing hair out, she was also loosing hair. Moreover she used to have scabs around her mouth that seemed to be resistant to any treatment (bacterial, fungal and more). We tried everything the vets could have thought of but without result. So finally they recommended that we spayed her as she had a massive cysts on her ovaries. They said that those cysts could had been responsible for hormone overproduction and itching as a result.

Her left hind leg feel warm. Also it seems to have darker and purple strip on it - I don't believe it always looked like this.

I also noticed that one of her "fingers" on right hind leg are a little bit swollen and definitely painful for her as screamed when I touched it

She really does not have hair on her rear and it occurred about the same time she started tearing herself out and scratching. I don't think she has a lump on her rear - it only looks like this because she is very skinny and that "lump" is her spine poking out of skin. She also lost a lot of her weight since last month - used to weigh around 720 - 740 grams now it's between 650-670 but is steady for a while.
It's hard to tell if her water intake increased at all as she refused to drink water from bottle about a year ago - tried different bottles and other measures but without success. She absorbs water only from veggies and fresh greens.

For the diarrhea I recently dose her with 1/3 teaspoon of probiotic but results are not very satisfactory.
 

Fay

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I would suggest posting all this information on the Guinea Lynx forum. They tend to be more knowledgeable when it comes to complicated medical cases like this. Although @bpatters might have some advice:

https://www.guinealynx.info/forums/
 

lunarminx

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Not that I know anything remotely about this but as someone that has suffered a ton of nerve damage in my back that has even at times made my right foot turn out when I walk. It may be nerve damage from the operation I am guessing? I also have a pinched funny bone nerve that caused my ring finger and pinkie on my right hand to go numb/tingliesh. The pinkie is painful when it touches things, like a needle picking it.
 

bpatters

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Yes, do start a medical thread for her (one per pig) over at Guinea Lynx. You'll have to host your pictures on a website somewhere (Flickr, Shutterfly, etc), and then link to them. If Lynx thinks it's appropriate, she'll copy the pictures to her permanent server.
 

Halski83

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I would suggest posting all this information on the Guinea Lynx forum. They tend to be more knowledgeable when it comes to complicated medical cases like this. Although @bpatters might have some advice:

https://www.guinealynx.info/forums/

Thank you very much for advice - I already did that and hopefully someone there will at least point me in the right direction.
 

Fay

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I see the post you made on GL and that people are responding to it. Hopefully with their help and a really good vet you'll be able to get to the bottom of the issues. I hope your pig will make a full recovery!
 
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