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Urgent Advice Needed Please

S

shanet1

Junior Guinea Pig
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So I'm not in the UK.
I am from the UK though so i figured you guys would be up now (2:25am here 9:25pm there)

Our little guinea angel wasn't eating today. She was fine yesterday eating lile normal.
So i took her to the only vet that would look at exotic animals today at 2pm (so 12 hours ago), an emergency vet. The one everyone around here recommends was full and couldn't see her and isnt open again till Monday.
So the vet she saw they did xrays and scans but couldn't find anything wrong with her such as ovary cysts etc and her vitals were fine. They injected her with fluids.
She was reponsive etc just not herself. She wasn't moving very much or eating.
I didn't see her poop or pee.
She normally is very talkative.
We got given some pain medication and some critical care to give her which we have been giving her in an 1ml syringe.
Her breathing has become very laboured now though and she is barely moving. Cant support her body etc she just flops.
I am not sure what to do :(

Any help would be appreciated. I could rush her back to the emergency vet which is a 50min drive away but not sure they will do much as they didn't really do anything earlier.
She is old about 6 or 7
 
oh and she did poop twice and pee a little earlier
 
could i have messed up feeding her the critical care? i put the syringe in the side of her mouth and got her to chew on it but could some of it got in her lungs?
 
the pain medicine is buprenorphine which vet said was to relax her stomach
I'm due to give her more at 3:30am
 
Hey!

So sorry about what you're going through. Is she bloated by any chance?

Buprenorphine is a strong analgesic, but, as the name indicates, is an opioid, and a strong one at that, so it could make her very drowsy and potentially slow down her gut even more, especially if she's bloated already.

If I were in your shoes, I'd go back to the vet and discuss with them the possibility of administering some gut stimulants - metoclopramide and/or ranitidine help re-activate the gut even in the absence of (clinically significant) bloat, since they'd also act as appetite stimulants.

When syringe-feeding, do take care to not push too much in her mouth - as a rule of thumb, I push no more than .2 mls and then let the piggy chew and swallow. But I would keep syringe-feeding and rehydrating the piggy to make sure the guts keep moving.

IMPO, opioid analgesics should only be a last resort, did your vet indicate why we went straight to the big guns and didn't use metacam instead first?
 
hey thanks for replying. they aren't a speclist in exotics. i asked why she needed pain medication over the phone when they had noted she wasn't in pain. they said it was to help move everything along in her stomach. they said she had slight bloat i think but not much. I'm holding her in one hand and typing on the other so my replies will be slow. holding her has helped remove her breathing issue
 
i think that pain killer has made her like this aswell
was supposed to give her more now but not going to
 
Buprenorphine has exactly the opposite effect - it relaxes the smooth muscle tissue in the gut, which helps with the pain, but also results in slowing down the gut.

I can't help with the breathing issue, though I'd ask whether they noticed any cardiac abnormality, fluid in the lungs or URI symptoms that can be treated. From your description, I believe it's unlikely that you caused the breathing problem by syringe-feeding her, it sounds like there's an underlying issue. I hope you can take her to an exotics vet soon.

Please don't discontinue treatment on the basis of my advice, I'm not a vet. But phone the vet and discuss this with them - they may have had a good reason for prescribing an opioid.
 
they weren't able to give me a good reason when i asked them. i dont think they know guinea pigs very well.her breathing is okay now I'm holding her which is odd
 
they couldn't find anything wrong with her so like you said that strong a pain medication seems ott if they couldn't identify any issues
 
I'm going to ask about the gut stimulants so thanks for mentioning that!:)
 
It does sound strange indeed.

When my vets treat with an opioid, their protocol always indicates that it should be administered alongside gut stimulants. Could you ring the vet and ask if they'd be willing to consider administering metoclopramide and/or ranitidine to help counteract the effects of buprenorphine?

Sorry, just read you were going to discuss the gut stimulants with the vet, great!
 
yep going to do that.
i want to drive her in now but its nearly 4am here and I'm barely keeping my eyes open! its a 50min drive aswell
 
Oh, it does sound like a horrible situation... Mine usually get ill prior to us going on a trip, so I now have some sort of travel anxiety as a result.

Fingers crossed for your little girl and you :hug: You're doing a great job helping her, she must be lucky to have you in her corner.

It will be morning soon, perhaps it would be possible to take her to an exotics vet during the day. I realize you must have already checked Guinea Lynx's vet locator, but in the off-chance you haven't, here it is:
Guinea Lynx :: GL's Vet List
 
I'm in Calgary Canada now. used to live in england though.
the only two i could find ones exotic vet wasn't back till Thursday the other was fully booked and not open till Monday.
They recommended the emergency one who did at least see her but they still recommended i get an appointment with the exotic pet hospital.
 
Guinea Lynx is mostly for the US and Canada.

Here are the three vets recommended in Calgary:

  • Animal Care Emergency
    Dr. Lynne Ford
    1635 - 17 Ave SW
    Calgary, Alberta

    Phone: (403)770-6388

    Dr. Ford is very kind and competent. This clinic is EMERGENCY ONLY and cannot be used for regular vet care or for more intensive procedures. I would only recommend Dr. Ford for guinea pig care- this clinic treats all animals and I'm personally not familiar with the other doctors' competency with guinea pigs. However, Dr. Ford was excellent when we required emergency care. She provided a thorough exam, a diagnosis, first-doses of medication and fluids, and she sent us home with plenty of antibiotics, painkillers, and critical care to last us until we were able to see a regular vet. Her services were extremely appreciated in a time of need.
    Contributed by: shannen - 5/2/2006, 11:42 pm

  • Calgary Avian & Exotic Pet Clinic
    www.calgarypetvet.com
    Dr. Leticia Materi
    Bay 1, 2308 - 24th Street S.W.
    Calgary, AB T2T 5H8

    Tel: 403-240-3577
    Fax: 403-249-8160

    Dr. Materi is kind, caring, and extremely skilled. She is extremely thorough, is very knowledgeable, and brings an excellent "bedside manner" to the room. She is impressively competent in handling a fussy guinea pig through dental exams (she does not use anesthetic for trimmings), anal temperatures, ear cleanings, etc. Her staff is excellent, as well, and the clinic is well-run, efficient, and on-time.
    Contributed by: shannen - 5/2/2006, 11:42 pm
    Address updated: March 16, 2016

  • Dewinton Pet Hospital
    www.dewintonvet.com
    Dr. Eva Hadzima
    412 Pine Creek Rd
    DeWinton, AB T0L-0X0
    (just south of Calgary on Hwy 2A)

    Phone: (587) 317.0717

    Dr. Eva covers all exotics in this practice (DeWinton Pet Hospital), and she seems to do them all really well! She prides herself on educating her pet parents to make sure that you really are doing the best for your critters. I first saw them for a well-gecko visit, but when my smallest cavy developed conjunctivitis (and I called immediately because of you guys) they squeezed me in despite being full. "We don't like to wait, especially when it's the eye." Great staff in general.
    Contribued by: MusketeersPlus2 - 5/19/2015, 10:49 pm
Veterinarians: Canada - Guinea Lynx Records
 
see how it works now and yep the two main one liste are the two i tried
 
I tried dewinton , away till Thursday and the Calgary exotic vet shut tomorrow and were fully booked.
The other one will be just like the emergency place i went. they can see them but dont know enough to treat them properly

thanks for posting those though
 
I'm not sure she is going to make it through the night :(
 
calling the vet now and think I'm gona drive her in
 
was halfway driving in and she passed :(
i pulled over as hadnt felt her move for ashile
Thank you for your advice though Rosie.
Its gona be a long drive home. She was such a sweet little thing.
 
I'm so, so sorry :hug:

You did everything you could for her, and at least you have the comfort of knowing she was pain-free at the end.
 
yes i didn't want her to suffer so thats why i was driving her in. she was a little fighter. wish id driven her in sooner now :(
 
I am very sorry for your loss. You have done what you could. It is always very difficult to judge, and for some reason, these things always tend to happen overnight or on weekends! :(

It was obviously her day; it sounds like she's gone into mulitple organ failure from old age. There is nothing you can do; how gentle or not it is depends on how fit she and the other organs are and in which order they close down. If there is any discomfort for longer than 15-30 minutes towards the end when the organs and body are becoming oxygen starved, it is right to seek vet help, but you often will not make it as the process is often quite quick. It is more traumatic for you, of course, when you do not make it. :(

It is perfectly normal to have feelings of guilt and failure at the onset of the grieving process if you are a caring owner; that is what you are going through right now. We all go through this.

Please take consolation that your girl hasn't suffered for long and that towards the end she would have been mostly out of it anyway. It is worse for you sitting by, especially when it is the first time and you have never experienced dying before. It is a much more physical process than the gently drifting away in your sleep that is our - unfortunately incorrect - concept of the dying process. :(
 
She was a good age and at least you were with her when she passed away.
Sounds to me like it was just her time, there may well have been nothing left to do for her.
She knew you loved her and you did what was best for her :( x
 
So sorry you lost her. She was a good age, and her time had come. Take comfort in that she must have been a happy girl having had such a caring person as you looking after her.
 
thanks everyone for the kind replies. missing her squeak this morning :( my gf and I would call her name in the morning and she would go crazy putting her nose in the air and squeaking
 
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