Bloat + URI (In with emergency vet)

[Free Ranger]

He sounds like a very knowledgeable vet! I hope the supplementation and time in the sun helps her. When Ivy was unwell we did a lot of the feeds outside because it seemed like less of a 'pressured' situation than sitting next to her cage and I think she enjoyed the sounds and smells of the back garden in her last weeks. Even if they're poorly they can still have happy times x

 

[Wiebke]

Stomach bloat is much rarer, but it can happen; emeprid/metocoplopramide is the best gut med for that part. I hope that you are finally getting there.

VERY sorry about the leg. It's not the news you want to hear.

Please be careful about home medicating on spec. Anybody outside Switzerland can call themselves a rescue without licensing and supervision, so the results can be accordingly. There are quite a number of lower welfare standard rescues active online.
Active charcoal in guinea pigs may have been recommended back in the 80ies when piggy medical knowledge was still stuck in the Stone Age but things have moved on a lot since then. Please never use anything on spec without referring to your vet, especially when your piggy is already on a medical cocktail.

 

[Josie_lg]

Could they see anything else on the x rays around the lungs in relation to the URI? Poor girl. I really hope she starts to feel better soon. We have been treating my piggie for illness for the last three weeks and it is exhausting so I am sending big hugs to you, you are doing all you can. I know bloat can be secondary to pain. So I wonder if your chest, leg and stomach issues are connected or all separate

 

[avafaghani]

Hello all.
I've been having some real issues with one of my older lady piggies.
She's about 4 or 5 we're not 100% sure she was a rescue along with her sister.
Earlier this week we rushed her into an emergency appointment because she was pretty flat, wasn't using her left back leg, eating or drinking and had lost 200g.
The vet picked up she had a bloaty tummy then, but also a respiratory infection, sent us home with treatments for the respiratory issue (baytril and loxicom, probably not helping the bloat?) but nothing for the bloat, I did take her off veggies and put her on critical care and hay only, she wasn't really eating any veggies anyway. I picked up that she was making a hooting sound last month and took her in but the vet didn't find anything then in regards to her respiratory issues despite the noise but did say she was a little bloaty then but didn't do much about it.

Today I wasn't happy with how she was progressing, still not eating or drinking with out my assistance and not moving around so I took her back in.
This vet was worried about the bloat and her temperature being about 36, checked her tummy with an ultra sound, she does have cystic ovaries as well but the gas isn't near them so seemingly a separate issue.
So she's in an incubator with them now and they are putting her on motility drugs (I can't remember the names my brain is fogged) to try to get the gas to shift and moving all her medication onto injections instead so as not to upset her tummy more.
The vet said if it doesn't shift we'll have to consider putting her to sleep.

I just wanted to check here and see if anyone had any other ideas. This isn't my usual guinea pig savy vet as its an emergency vet today too and that always makes me a little doubtful on their guinea pig knowledge as I know piggies can be a bit specialist but she seemed more knowledgeable and with any luck my two preferred piggy savvy vets might be in as well, I'd hope they'd give advice too as the senior vets there but I'm still a worried if this is the right course or not.
But I'm just at a loss and feeling so miserable, I feel like I've failed my baby.

I'm so sorry about all of this! I'm no expert at all, but my 5 y/o guinea pig has had persistent bloat for around a year now and I've learned a couple ways to minimize it.

The most important thing as mentioned by everyone is the massages, when guineas have bloat, especially persistent/severe bloat you will be able to feel the bubbles pop and move. I've tried using massage devices in the past and they work well too! I do prefer doing long strokes from around the rib area to the butt to help guide it out and have found that it works, and all of my vets have approved of that technique too.

Another thing that I'm not sure if anyone mentioned, or your vet touched on is veggie intake. If you can, cut out almost all veggies/fruit. They tend to make the bloat worse. Hay + pellets should be okay, I also give Bene-Bac (a probiotic) to my guineas super often. If poops get bad, feeding them their own poops, a probiotic, and cutting out veggies should help. Critical care or a supplement is great if your guinea isn't eating like you mentioned. One of my guineas went through the same thing but be careful because with bloat-prone pigs; syringe feeding can have air bubbles which causes more gas build up in the stomach. Also, if your vet hasn't checked yet for any ulcers in the mouth I recommend getting that checked! It's a bit unlikely in your situation but lots of syringe feeding, or even a piece of hay could cause ulcer's in guineas mouth's which may make them not want to eat as well. (Unlikely at this point in your journey but has happened to me)

As for medicine, I live in the United States so a lot of the names/popular medications are different. I use a combo of cisapride, meloxicam, and simethicone. I've heard some mixed things about simethicone but it has helped in my persistent bloat journey. It was prescribed by a vet but many vets also say you can get at a drug store, just some baby simethicone if you're ever unable to access the vet in time. I've heard gripe water is also great too but I have no personally experience using it!

I wish you all the best and please remember this is not your fault at all! You're doing your best and I'm sending you and your piggies all good energy

 

[Olivitree]

Could they see anything else on the x rays around the lungs in relation to the URI? Poor girl. I really hope she starts to feel better soon. We have been treating my piggie for illness for the last three weeks and it is exhausting so I am sending big hugs to you, you are doing all you can. I know bloat can be secondary to pain. So I wonder if your chest, leg and stomach issues are connected or all separate

Uri I think has cleared up for the most part, finishing off her course of antibiotics and then we’ll see.

I'm so sorry about all of this! I'm no expert at all, but my 5 y/o guinea pig has had persistent bloat for around a year now and I've learned a couple ways to minimize it.

The most important thing as mentioned by everyone is the massages, when guineas have bloat, especially persistent/severe bloat you will be able to feel the bubbles pop and move. I've tried using massage devices in the past and they work well too! I do prefer doing long strokes from around the rib area to the butt to help guide it out and have found that it works, and all of my vets have approved of that technique too.

Another thing that I'm not sure if anyone mentioned, or your vet touched on is veggie intake. If you can, cut out almost all veggies/fruit. They tend to make the bloat worse. Hay + pellets should be okay, I also give Bene-Bac (a probiotic) to my guineas super often. If poops get bad, feeding them their own poops, a probiotic, and cutting out veggies should help. Critical care or a supplement is great if your guinea isn't eating like you mentioned. One of my guineas went through the same thing but be careful because with bloat-prone pigs; syringe feeding can have air bubbles which causes more gas build up in the stomach. Also, if your vet hasn't checked yet for any ulcers in the mouth I recommend getting that checked! It's a bit unlikely in your situation but lots of syringe feeding, or even a piece of hay could cause ulcer's in guineas mouth's which may make them not want to eat as well. (Unlikely at this point in your journey but has happened to me)

As for medicine, I live in the United States so a lot of the names/popular medications are different. I use a combo of cisapride, meloxicam, and simethicone. I've heard some mixed things about simethicone but it has helped in my persistent bloat journey. It was prescribed by a vet but many vets also say you can get at a drug store, just some baby simethicone if you're ever unable to access the vet in time. I've heard gripe water is also great too but I have no personally experience using it!

I wish you all the best and please remember this is not your fault at all! You're doing your best and I'm sending you and your piggies all good energy

Thank you for taking the time there, I think I threw basically everything you suggested at her, I have no idea what worked in the end if any of it actually did or if it passed naturally when she started moving a bit more, but her bloat has pretty much subsided and seems to be staying down.

I believe the vet thinks the leg and the bloat is related as she’s not moving, which seems to check out at the moment.
Bloat has completely subsided I think and not recurring with introduction of greens! Hurray!

Now just to hope that her leg will recover and it’s just a vitamin deficiency not bone cancer. here she is enjoying her vitamin D treatment.

Thank you everyone so much for your help and support. I probably won’t have much more to update until we know if her bone density issue is cancer or not so I will leave this as is for now so I don’t end up repeating myself. Much love to you all and your fuzzy babies.

 

[Free Ranger]

What a lovely picture to end on for now... and fingers crossed for her leg x

 

[avafaghani]

Uri I think has cleared up for the most part, finishing off her course of antibiotics and then we’ll see.


Thank you for taking the time there, I think I threw basically everything you suggested at her, I have no idea what worked in the end if any of it actually did or if it passed naturally when she started moving a bit more, but her bloat has pretty much subsided and seems to be staying down.

I believe the vet thinks the leg and the bloat is related as she’s not moving, which seems to check out at the moment.
Bloat has completely subsided I think and not recurring with introduction of greens! Hurray!

Now just to hope that her leg will recover and it’s just a vitamin deficiency not bone cancer. here she is enjoying her vitamin D treatment.
View attachment 176965
Thank you everyone so much for your help and support. I probably won’t have much more to update until we know if her bone density issue is cancer or not so I will leave this as is for now so I don’t end up repeating myself. Much love to you all and your fuzzy babies.

Awww this is so lovely to see!

If you don't mind me asking, do you mind explaining a little more what happened to your piggies leg? If you look at my recent thread I'm actually going through a similar thing right now with a weird hip/leg issue on my bloated piggie and most vets I've talked to have dismissed that bloat has caused it but it really looks like it has.

I'm so glad to see this photo though, what a cutie and such a great piggie owner

 

[Olivitree]

Awww this is so lovely to see!

If you don't mind me asking, do you mind explaining a little more what happened to your piggies leg? If you look at my recent thread I'm actually going through a similar thing right now with a weird hip/leg issue on my bloated piggie and most vets I've talked to have dismissed that bloat has caused it but it really looks like it has.

I'm so glad to see this photo though, what a cutie and such a great piggie owner

Hello there, sorry I missed this been pretty busy with piggie care and all sorts going on.

What happened with her leg is a micro fracture, her bone density got so low it just got a thin fracture(possibly not all the way through) likely just from walking on it.
This could be due to low vitamin D from being an indoor piggy or bone cancer (I can't remember the exact name) way we noticed was that her ankle was swollen and she was avoiding using her leg, hopping on one leg rather than using the other at all, I got in touch with my piggy savvy vet finally and he showed me that her bones in her leg were a bit like aero chocolate (just a bubbly hollow mess) so, I've been told to treat it as a vitamin deficiency as if its the cancer, there's nothing more we'll be able to do and we can't test for it as that would involve drilling the bone, which would just shatter it on a leg that small so not really an option.
Pops does also have mild arthritis in her knees I think he said but nothing dire yet and to be expected.

Hope you find an answer!


To update:
Pops still going not sure she's improving, starting to chew very slowly so another visit to the vet probably due.