MerryPip
Adult Guinea Pig
I thought I'd share our recent saga of treating Struan's bladder stones. It's not been a straight forward process but I thought it might be of interest to some of you and sharing and learning is always a good thing. Some of the pictures are a bit graphic so if you are squeamish you might want to skip this thread!
Struan is 4 and came to us after boar dating last November as a cagemate for our beautiful Suilven (RIP). He's a brilliant little guy with bags of character.....
On 20th September, just before bed we noticed he was really agitated and uncomfortable. On closer inspection it turned out he was passing blood in his urine which quickly turned to pure blood before he stopped passing anything at all..... He was in a lot of pain and crying a lot. We knew it was likely a bladder stone and hoped he would be able to pass it himself. We gave him plenty of water and some metacam and stayed up all night with him before taking him to the out-of hours vet in the morning when it was clear that whatever was bothering him he was not going to pass himself.
He was so poorly that the vet managed to x-ray him conscious as he didn't even move. She let us know that there was a 4mm bladder stone blocking the neck of his bladder, stopping urine from leaving the bladder and that our only options were surgery or to have him PTS. Needless to say we couldn't let him go so we opted for surgery. He was kept in and the vet was to perform the surgery that morning, urgently. It was horribly stressful, not knowing how it would go and as we all do we imagined the worst....
The vet then called to say that during his pre-op check they had discovered two mammary tumours, one large and one smaller that would also need removed. She felt it was possible to remove the larger tumour at the same time as the bladder stone and then he would need to return for further surgery in 6-8 weeks to remove the second one as there was not enough skin to close if both tumours were removed at the same time. Sooooo we said yes and sat and waited for news....
We picked up our little guy the next day and the vet had managed to take away both tumours as well as remove his bladder stone, some gravelly bits of stone and plenty of sludge. He was in a lot of pain and needed a lot of nursing and syringe feeding for the first few days. We had to increase his pain killers with permission from the vet as the prescribed dose was nowhere near enough to control his pain. Here's his belly not long after surgery:
So lots of cleaning and keeping him from bothering his stitches for the next 14 days until they were due out....
But unfortunately the area of his belly between the two lines of stitches became hard and dead tissue and had to be removed... We don't know if this occurred because the stitches were too tight, because of damage to the blood supply during surgery or just by chance. So we were left with a big open wound with lots of dead tissue to come away... The next picture shows it a few days after the middle part came away and for scale, the wound is about 4cm wide x 2cm long x1cm deep. There are also two tunnels/pockets at either end towards his legs.
This required a lot of intensive nursing care. He was washed twice daily and we had to spend time picking off the yellowy dead tissue so the wound could heal from the bottom up. Thankfully I have had some tissue viability training at work and my OH is a doctor so we weren't phased by this....
We did have a holiday away booked which terrified us but thankfully @Guinea pig slave came to the rescue and used her nursing training to look after him whilst were away!
When we returned his wound had healed even more and now 1 month after surgery this is what he looked like.... It was looking pink, healthy and it was getting smaller, coming in from the edges as we wanted it to.
We continued the cleaning and using the Dermagel wound care product we had ben prescribed and by this week (7 weeks post surgery) all that is left is a few wrinkles and very faint scars
We are so pleased he has healed so well despite battles with loss of appetite due to antibiotics, loss of weight and the woundcare. He's been an absolute angle through the whole thing and is something of a minor celebrity at the vets after surviving such a massive procedure that they don't routinely perform on piggies in that practice, complicated by the tumours.
The last photo has his belly shaved as we were back at the vets last night after an episode of squeaky, bloody wees earlier in the day and Struan had an ultrasound to eliminate any further bladder stones...... Thankfully there weren't any so we are home safe and sound with yet another round of antibiotics and continuing with the low calcium diet, flitered water and now starting on cystease (glucosamine) too.
Huge thanks to all the staff at Connaught Vet practice especially Nick & Catherine who have been awesome with him and given us 5 star care......
Struan is 4 and came to us after boar dating last November as a cagemate for our beautiful Suilven (RIP). He's a brilliant little guy with bags of character.....
On 20th September, just before bed we noticed he was really agitated and uncomfortable. On closer inspection it turned out he was passing blood in his urine which quickly turned to pure blood before he stopped passing anything at all..... He was in a lot of pain and crying a lot. We knew it was likely a bladder stone and hoped he would be able to pass it himself. We gave him plenty of water and some metacam and stayed up all night with him before taking him to the out-of hours vet in the morning when it was clear that whatever was bothering him he was not going to pass himself.
He was so poorly that the vet managed to x-ray him conscious as he didn't even move. She let us know that there was a 4mm bladder stone blocking the neck of his bladder, stopping urine from leaving the bladder and that our only options were surgery or to have him PTS. Needless to say we couldn't let him go so we opted for surgery. He was kept in and the vet was to perform the surgery that morning, urgently. It was horribly stressful, not knowing how it would go and as we all do we imagined the worst....
The vet then called to say that during his pre-op check they had discovered two mammary tumours, one large and one smaller that would also need removed. She felt it was possible to remove the larger tumour at the same time as the bladder stone and then he would need to return for further surgery in 6-8 weeks to remove the second one as there was not enough skin to close if both tumours were removed at the same time. Sooooo we said yes and sat and waited for news....
We picked up our little guy the next day and the vet had managed to take away both tumours as well as remove his bladder stone, some gravelly bits of stone and plenty of sludge. He was in a lot of pain and needed a lot of nursing and syringe feeding for the first few days. We had to increase his pain killers with permission from the vet as the prescribed dose was nowhere near enough to control his pain. Here's his belly not long after surgery:
So lots of cleaning and keeping him from bothering his stitches for the next 14 days until they were due out....
But unfortunately the area of his belly between the two lines of stitches became hard and dead tissue and had to be removed... We don't know if this occurred because the stitches were too tight, because of damage to the blood supply during surgery or just by chance. So we were left with a big open wound with lots of dead tissue to come away... The next picture shows it a few days after the middle part came away and for scale, the wound is about 4cm wide x 2cm long x1cm deep. There are also two tunnels/pockets at either end towards his legs.
This required a lot of intensive nursing care. He was washed twice daily and we had to spend time picking off the yellowy dead tissue so the wound could heal from the bottom up. Thankfully I have had some tissue viability training at work and my OH is a doctor so we weren't phased by this....
We did have a holiday away booked which terrified us but thankfully @Guinea pig slave came to the rescue and used her nursing training to look after him whilst were away!
When we returned his wound had healed even more and now 1 month after surgery this is what he looked like.... It was looking pink, healthy and it was getting smaller, coming in from the edges as we wanted it to.
We continued the cleaning and using the Dermagel wound care product we had ben prescribed and by this week (7 weeks post surgery) all that is left is a few wrinkles and very faint scars
We are so pleased he has healed so well despite battles with loss of appetite due to antibiotics, loss of weight and the woundcare. He's been an absolute angle through the whole thing and is something of a minor celebrity at the vets after surviving such a massive procedure that they don't routinely perform on piggies in that practice, complicated by the tumours.
The last photo has his belly shaved as we were back at the vets last night after an episode of squeaky, bloody wees earlier in the day and Struan had an ultrasound to eliminate any further bladder stones...... Thankfully there weren't any so we are home safe and sound with yet another round of antibiotics and continuing with the low calcium diet, flitered water and now starting on cystease (glucosamine) too.
Huge thanks to all the staff at Connaught Vet practice especially Nick & Catherine who have been awesome with him and given us 5 star care......
