Oh poor you and poor Artie......
Hugs to both.......
Re the lump.....Out of interest has Artie been neutered?
Re: the antibiotics - For info: A lot of people will give probiotics to a piggie on antibiotics so you might like to ask further about this. Do you happen to know if a culture of the urine sample was done or was it just examined microscopically or using a dipstick method? A lot of vets will only prescribe baytril for piggies as it is the only licensed antibiotic for this species but more and more vets now are prescribing septrin off-license as it appears to be a better bet for clearing up urine infections (especially stubborn ones)
Re the pain: This might be a difficult thing to do.....some vets don;t take very kindly to owners "suggestions" and obviously you don;t want to upset anybody.....so if it helps you can print out this post and take it to the vet
It might be worth asking your vet tomorrow whether a painkiller such as metacam (which is also anti-inflammatory) can be prescribed for a few days as in view of your description of the pain he is in it would help the little fellow.
The reason for asking for this is as follows:
When a piggie is in pain they stop eating so much and their weight can go down quite dramatically. It can also cause gut motility problems and , over a longer period of time, overgrowing teeth problems. A painkiller will help them towards eating their full daily quota.
Over the years I have had guinea pigs with inoperable kidney stones, urine/bladder infections, interstitial cystitis and bladder stones. In all cases they dropped weight and didn;t take on so much food untill they got some pain meds. Sometimes the first indication of a problem wasn;t squeaking while weeing or appearance of urine....but their sudden unexplained loss of weight.
I realise that Metacam given LONG TERM "might" possibly affect the kidneys (which is why understandably some vets are reluctant to prescribe it at all for piggies who have a urinary system problem). However my exotics vet will always put a piggie on short term metacam if pain/not -eating is involved.....His view (which I personally share) is that the short term complication of gut stasis/starvation is a much bigger risk to the piggy's health than the possible long term complications of metacam.
(There are also other painkillers your vet might prefer to prescribe such as rimadyl)
It would also be worth weighing him every day at the moment to make sure he isn;t losing weight .....and monitoring his poo output (sze, shape, frequency, consistency) for any signs that his gut motility is affected (especially as he is being given an antibiotic)
You also "might" need to prepare yourself to syringe feed him either Oxbow critical care or Supreme Recovery for a few days to keep his weight up and his guts moving. Hopefully this won;t be the case...but it;s worth being prepared anyway.
Glad to hear the infection is diagnosed and the little guy will be sorted with some antibiotics......Good luck with the X ray...fingers crossed it will not show anything significant.
BTW - just in case you want to print this out and show it to your vet...for their info my bona fides are that I am a qualified microbiologist (to PhD level)..and have owned piggies for the last 15 years.
x
I want to know what's wrong with him...
