basicpiggies
New Born Pup
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2018
- Messages
- 35
- Reaction score
- 23
- Points
- 175
Hi everyone,
Today was a VERY unexpectedly bad day.
My guinea pig, since her checkup in August, has just kept getting thinner. She LOVED to eat, and always took her veggies, but she just could not keep her weight.
Last night, she was perfectly normal. This morning, I woke up and she showed all signs of a very advanced respiratory illness. Breathing heavy, not moving, wet sneezes, discharge around the nose and eyes, all of it.
Before bringing her to the emergency vet, I tried to give her both critical care and a syringe with just plain water because I wasn’t sure at what point she stopped eating. She chewed it very weakly, but she quickly ended up just refusing the critical care. She’d let it just sit on her mouth and let it drip. She showed very little alertness as well when I would put my hand in front of her or even offer her her favorite snack.
I was expecting pneumonia, but because she was so thin the vet was able to actually feel a mass in her abdominal area. She was so thin and sick at that point, and the vet thinks that whatever this mass was was preventing her from sustaining any nutrients from what she was eating, even if she did constantly eat. Her lungs sounded good in the lower region and it seemed to her that the respiratory illness could’ve been a result of the lack of nutrients she was getting.
At this point it seemed like if I brought her home, she would be dead by the night. It felt cruel to be selfish and bring her home when I knew in my heart that she was suffering and probably would starve to death or experience respiratory failure. They gave me the option to euthanize her and what made me make that decision was when they left me alone with her — she kept trying to roll over on her back and was opening her mouth. I could tell she was suffering and could not breathe. She couldn’t even keep her head up.
I think it was the right decision because I know that now she doesn’t have to suffer. I felt it would have been selfish to force her to fight through this. She had lost so much weight and was SO sick.
I guess I’m just here to ask for some support and reassurance. I feel guilty because I believe I maybe could have prevented this, although I know there’s no way to know for sure. Maybe if I had caught the mass earlier, it would have still caused her to lose weight and become ill due to a compromised immune system. Or maybe if I caught it earlier she would’ve been just fine and none of this would’ve happened…I don’t know. This makes me wonder about her past behavior, too. I brought her back in August for a head tilt that went away the next day, as well as difficulty chewing & a decreased appetite. It feels like she was just never the same since she experienced that.![sad :( :(](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f622.png)
Today was a VERY unexpectedly bad day.
My guinea pig, since her checkup in August, has just kept getting thinner. She LOVED to eat, and always took her veggies, but she just could not keep her weight.
Last night, she was perfectly normal. This morning, I woke up and she showed all signs of a very advanced respiratory illness. Breathing heavy, not moving, wet sneezes, discharge around the nose and eyes, all of it.
Before bringing her to the emergency vet, I tried to give her both critical care and a syringe with just plain water because I wasn’t sure at what point she stopped eating. She chewed it very weakly, but she quickly ended up just refusing the critical care. She’d let it just sit on her mouth and let it drip. She showed very little alertness as well when I would put my hand in front of her or even offer her her favorite snack.
I was expecting pneumonia, but because she was so thin the vet was able to actually feel a mass in her abdominal area. She was so thin and sick at that point, and the vet thinks that whatever this mass was was preventing her from sustaining any nutrients from what she was eating, even if she did constantly eat. Her lungs sounded good in the lower region and it seemed to her that the respiratory illness could’ve been a result of the lack of nutrients she was getting.
At this point it seemed like if I brought her home, she would be dead by the night. It felt cruel to be selfish and bring her home when I knew in my heart that she was suffering and probably would starve to death or experience respiratory failure. They gave me the option to euthanize her and what made me make that decision was when they left me alone with her — she kept trying to roll over on her back and was opening her mouth. I could tell she was suffering and could not breathe. She couldn’t even keep her head up.
I think it was the right decision because I know that now she doesn’t have to suffer. I felt it would have been selfish to force her to fight through this. She had lost so much weight and was SO sick.
I guess I’m just here to ask for some support and reassurance. I feel guilty because I believe I maybe could have prevented this, although I know there’s no way to know for sure. Maybe if I had caught the mass earlier, it would have still caused her to lose weight and become ill due to a compromised immune system. Or maybe if I caught it earlier she would’ve been just fine and none of this would’ve happened…I don’t know. This makes me wonder about her past behavior, too. I brought her back in August for a head tilt that went away the next day, as well as difficulty chewing & a decreased appetite. It feels like she was just never the same since she experienced that.
![sad :( :(](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f622.png)