Culture results came back with no growth. Basically, we're in a really good position right now since I've got a fairly healthy pig who simply needs to be one giant bladder stone lighter than he is right now.
The plan is for me to bring him in about an hour before we're ready to start. We'll do an exam then and give him his premeds and likely shave the site before we induce. Quick induction in the handy little induction chamber that my coworker put together and then a speedy cysto.
Standard procedure in my clinic is to monitor and record vitals every 5 minutes so we'll be doing at least that. I wish we had better/different equipment though, it's frustrating that we won't be able to have a SpO2 or even a doppler on him for monitoring as the ones we have simply won't fit him. It might end up being one of those fun surgeries where someone spend the entire time with a stethoscope on him unless I can come up with a way to make the doppler work for him. I'm working the evening shift so I'll be the one doing his post-op care which is comforting.
Does anyone have advice on how best to taper off his pain meds? Or even when to start?
In my opinion and experience, right about now, in light of the fact that he's doing so well postop.
I've had good success tapering the opiate down while ramping the NSAID up, then ceasing the opiate, then tapering and eventually ceasing the NSAID. Visualize it sorta like two overlapping roller coaster humps, if that makes any sense at all.
Glad to hear he seems to be recovering well. Thanks for the sedation details.
Cut off the buprenoprhine last night but kept the metacam. He does look a more alert today and maintained his body weight over the past twelve hours. I will be so very, very thankful if this keeps up. My poor vet has been a bit of wreck over this, something about working on a coworkers pet I think. It's odd because she does a lot of routine surgeries on rats and rabbits at the other clinic she works at, they do all of those surgeries for a local rescue.
" ... something about working on a coworkers pet I think."
Ditto Lynx. The clinical outline you've given is very interesting and valuable.
Timothy and I are in northern town hell. The only vet that will see him is an hour and half away, that's not a big deal right now since we don't have snow yet. It'll be more of a hassle in the winter but I can still pull it off. Only problem is that the vet is not particularly good. He's just the *only* vet that will see Timothy. My next best options are 3 hours away (maybe a vet there) and 8 hours (a vet I used to work for).
Over two weeks he lost 150g putting him at 1kg as opposed to his healthy 1.15kg self. He is still eating just not enough. He's not eager to see his veggies but he will eventually eat them. Same deal for hay and pellets. I just got an order of orchard grass in that he seems a tiny bit more interested in but nowhere near normal. I've been supplementing with CC mixed with a bit of baby food to keep his interest up. He's been eating most of that with minimal syringe feeding from me. I think it's guinea pig crack.
The vet could not get blood from him nor a decent urine sample. The sample Timothy provided in the kennel had no blood, the occasional crystal and a normal USG. His teeth looked wonderful and the vet did actually have the correct equipment to get a good look. His x-ray machine was down and he's still waiting on parts. This is the northern hell part of the equation. The vet didn't seem to think he'd have more luck getting a blood sample at a later date, I think I may be the only person he's met who wanted bloodwork done on her guinea pig.
No palpable masses or guarding, lungs sound great, no eye discharge, no pained noises when eliminating and no murmur heard. Basically, we've got anorexia and the history of the occasional cough. I think I got complacent with typically hearing him cough while eating and I've now caught him coughing at other times. It's rare but it is happening. The good news is that this vet is willing to give me heart meds just in case, mostly because he has no idea what is happening. He'll be calling it in today to the one compounding pharmacy available since they're not open on Sundays nor was the vet. I just somehow managed to catch him in the office catching up on paperwork. I miss my old vet.
Very lucky you were able to catch him, and very nice of him to give you the heart med. I realize you're in no-access-hell but he does sound like a decent vet.
Having said that -- I still suspect teeth which means x-ray parts needed. Any idea when they will be in?
Without reading back, how old is Timothy?
The heart med alone may do the trick. Please keep us posted.
He's six now but, prior to this, still acted like a young pig. Less popcorning and zoomies but they did still happen.
The x-ray parts should be in today, I'm going to call once they open. They don't have dental x-rays nor does any clinic in the surrounding area that is willing to see guinea pigs. I'm disturbed that they just flat our refuse to see them, the idea of having an emergency terrifies me. True, the good ER clinic where I lived before was an hour away but they were GOOD and fully equipped for everything.
I missed the vet's call yesterday but he mentioned he was calling the script into the compounding pharmacy. I missed the pharmacy by about 5 minutes. This morning I'll figure out what we got and negotiate if need be.
We got a lateral and v/d of him but couldn't get any skull rads without sedation and the vet is nervous to try it. He's completely discounting any dental problems since, with the buccal separators, he couldn't see any spurs or impaired tongue movement or anything else that looked wrong. Whole pig shots looked good overall but he did have a bit of gas so we've added on simethicone. Well, it's more like I told the vet I was going to and he didn't object.
We started on the enalapril but I'd love some input on dosage. The reference the vet went with was 0.5 mg every other day for a roughly 1kg pig. I'm pretty sure that I did 0.25mg SID for Alfalfa but I can't find it in my records. Any thoughts?
I'd look over the heart page and the heart sticky if no one has any ideas.
Timmy is doing quite well, he's put on most of the weight he lost. He's more active, begging for veggies, and did a great starving pig impression for my Mom on her visit. Behaviourally, he's back to normal.
The past two days I've noticed some calcium grit on his fleece. No pain when peeing, no visible blood in the urine. He's getting unlimited grassy hay, limited Oxbow pellets and veggies in a 2:1 Ca:P ratio. I'm working on lowering that to a 1.5:1 ratio. He's also getting some critical care offered daily because he loves it and I want to up his weight a bit more. The only real change to his diet has been the compounded enalapril.
Does anyone have any information on calcium content in compounded meds? I'm waiting for a callback from my vet and from the pharmacist that does the compounding. We've tentatively scheduled a vet visit for tomorrow. If we get heavy snows I might not be able to make it as I don't have winter tires installed yet and I'm not buying tires until I find out what Timothy will need. Catch-22s are always good fun. In case of snow I'm hoping to convince a local vet to see him, do some rads and a UA and forward to my other vet.
Right now I'm thinking rads to rule out stones and take a look at what we may be looking at in terms of sludge. I'm upping water intake via syringe and will likely be asking for SQ fluid supplies to help flush out his system. He hasn't increased water intake on his own but there wasn't a noticeable difference when he had his stone. My previous vet didn't see the point to adding polycitra but I'm going to talk to this vet and see if he's will to try. Help?
Have you seen the thread on here discussing whether Oxbow pellets contribute to gritty urine in some pigs? There's some anecdotal evidence that switching to Kleenmama's has helped some pigs with that problem.
Since you're in Canada, you can't get KM at the moment, but I wonder if a switch to another kind of pellet with a different calcium compound in it might help.
And... we're back. If anyone had wondered apparently most compounded meds, and certainly my enalapril, don't have a calcium content at all. The UA and rads were good. It just seemed to be a transient thing as he's stopped having any grit whatsoever. Or it could have been linked to the pellets, I've gone pelletless with him now. It's more work but I feel more secure about it.
He's lost 20 grams in about a week and had reduced appetite so we were off to the vet again today. I managed to track the one in town down that I had worked with at a previous job. He has next to no experience with guinea pigs but was thrilled to have permission to do more than euthanize or toss random ABs at one.
Teeth looked good, examined with sedation. Rads looked good, no stones and no fluid. Were able to do a mini panel in house and rule out diabetes and kidney disease. Liver values are waaay out of whack though, I'll get the exact values when I speak to the vet this evening since I forgot to record them at the clinic. The vet is thinking primary liver disease of some sort based upon the numbers. We don't have an U/S and I'm not willing to do a liver biopsy on him at this time.
Plan is to correct his mild dehydration and then continue with some SQ fluids with added B12 on a regular basis. His temp was normal and I don't want to toss ABs at him when there's no sign of an infection. I'm going to suggest denamarin or separate SAM-e and milk thistle supplements, I think the vet will be supportive. Anyone have actual dosages? I can't seem to find them anywhere.
I don't believe there are any in the guide.
I think my vet found some on VIN.
We tried milk thistle on one of ours, to no avail but that doesn't mean it wouldn't help your pig. If your vet can look on VIN I think there are SAM-e dosages on there at the very least. I think. I don't still have the dosages, otherwise would post them.
Thank you. I missed the vet last night but I left a message asking about milk thistle and SAM-e. Hopefully he gets it and has some info for me. Timothy is feeling a bit better today, he's tossing his head around when I'm giving him the CC and he screamed like I was killing him when he got his SQ.
So, long recap and questions. I'm sorry, I'm rambling in my head and trying to talk things through.
With regular CC (syringe first few days then switching to eating a slurry with a bit of baby food), SQ fluids, B vitamins and SAM-e Timothy stabilized for a bit. His weight went up to 975g, it had dipped down to 900 at his worst. Healthy, happy, young Timothy was 1.1kg but had steadily lost with first his cystotomy then heart disease. We never quite managed to put all the weight back on but he had been at an okay weight, a bit thin but doable.
On the third I noticed that he'd begun to lose weight, dropping to 950g overnight. I began pushing more critical care and booked the soonest vet appointment I could get (today the 4th).
Yesterday he was depressed and refused his veggies. I began syringe feeding and found, as the night progressed that he was having difficulties swallowing. He was drooling and occasionally gagging. By 4 am he appeared painful in that he was grinding his molars, sitting hunched up and occasionally rocking back and forth. The drooling was worse and he was spitting up fluid, I'd stopped even trying to get CC in him a few hours before. Neither vet in town called me back despite repeated calls on my part.
At 4 I cracked and did a bad thing. He was painful and I couldn't get a vet and I panicked a little bit. I gave him some buprenorphine that I had laying around even though I know it's not indicated for use in those with liver disease, I don't think it's okay with the heart disease either. At that point in time I didn't feel that we had much to lose and I was hoping to give him a bit of comfort while waiting for the vet to call. Within half and hour he was, dare I say it, perky. He got grumpy with me cuddling him then went into his cage and began eating some hay. I provided veggies and CC on a dish and he devoured both. This morning he's had a bit of veggies, more CC and eaten a bunch of hay. He LOUDLY wheeked when I opened the fridge for coffee cream.
We have an appointment today that I had assumed would be euthanasia. Now I'm not so sure. Obviously the buprenorphine isn't something that we can continue but I'm wondering what is going on? I read that in humans it's used to treat conditions in which a patient has difficulty swallowing so I'm thinking that's where it's being helpful more than anything.
The more I've been feeling his neck the more it feels like it might be a bit edematous, it's definitely not a standard fatty pig dewlap feel and it's not the same as the just skin feeling of an emaciated pig. His abdomen feels okay but I'm not exactly a rockstar in that department. He's pale but his CRT is less than 2 seconds. I heard some hooting this morning when we were hanging out but he was happily eating some cucumber in between. Could this be a worsening of his heart disease accounting for some of the signs? The pale mm, hooting and lethargy all make me think heart but, honestly, at this point it could be pretty much anything going on him. Teeth are another obvious one.
Now, I'm a bit stuck as to what to do. Obviously, there's a lot going on with him and I don't want to prolong his life out of a selfish desire to hold onto him. On the other hand, if this is something manageable then I would hate to not give it a try. I'm leaning towards doing another x-ray to see if there's something that points to heart that we might be able to try treating more aggressively. If it's something like a pain issue associated with another bladder stone then we'll euthanize, I think it would be kinder than having any vet here perform surgery on him.
Does this seem reasonable? Rads to see if it's something obvious with his heart, or something else obvious like a bladder stone. If nothing is clealy obvious in the rads then I'd proceed to anesthetizing him with iso then have the vet thoroughly examine his teeth, if that's not the problem then we'd euthanize. It feels so cold blooded to lay it out like this but I think it's my best plan. Please tell me someone has a better one?
I think it was a good idea to address the pain issue. I just don't know enough to guess at what is going on. You know all the possibilities. I just hope that if whatever is wrong can be managed or cured, you have success. Quality of life is so important and most people take that into account too.