Soft Stool/Squeaking and Straining While Pooing

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:16 am


I would avoid fresh raw corn but the husks would be great.

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Topaz

Post   » Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:23 am


Oh Ech, I'm right there with you. Zoey has gone back to mushy toothpaste like poos for the past three days now, for no apparent reason and with no changes in ANYthing. If it is any consolation, you are not alone.

Wonderful record keeping on your part. This is so helpful and I find myself going back to previous medical threads/posts of mine when wanting to look for a pattern or answers. Or when I am just wondering.

I'm so sorry this is happening. It sounds like you are trying everything. We could be writing duplicate posts here. :(

Angie, I had the water and/or water bottle thought as well and have been scrubbing out the water bottle daily. Also, my girls all get filtered water so I've pretty much ruled that out.

Thinking of you guys, Ech, and hoping you see some improvement.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:26 am


Maybe both of you can keep a diary of sorts with all the variables by day. I know these mushy poops are discouraging.

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:44 pm


Sorry that I haven't been posting or keeping records these past couple of days. I have been feeling very depressed and morose about Buttercup's situation. There has been absolutely no improvement and her stools have pretty much just been consistently bad.

Image

I have been giving her the kyodophilus 2-3 hours after each dose of Flagyl daily. Also, she has been getting only 1 leaf of romaine lettuce and about 1/2 cup of green and red leaf lettuce daily for the past several weeks. After she is done with this last course of Flagyl in about a week and a half (next Wednesday, the 28th), I am going to take her back to the vet and have a fecal culture done. Still, I am not holding my breath that the culture will provide some sort of miraculous insight, as Topaz said that it did not come up with anything for her Zoey (Buttercup and Zoey have very similar issues).

I have been wary about adding anything new to her diet, but at this point I doubt that the corn husks can do much to hurt. I will let you know how the corn husks go and start to keep records once more.

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Topaz

Post   » Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:49 pm


I'm sorry Buttercup is still having these issues, Ech. Those poos are looking very loose and light in color. Is it just the picture or is the color accurate? I don't think Zoey's have ever been that light in color but they have been almost as loose earlier on. They've been more like a thick toothpaste consistency and sticky for the most part.

I've just posted an update in her thread.

Good thoughts for you guys. You know I can certainly empathize. I just wish I had advice or an answer for you(and me).

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:28 am


I'm so sorry too. I understand your being discouraged. I wish one of the many reasonable treatments you have tried took care of this.

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:29 pm


Topaz, I believe it was the lighting in that picture that made the stool look so light. Here is another picture from today, and you can see it is a bit darker:

Image

I sent my boyfriend to the grocery store and he came back empty handed, saying that not only did he not see any corn with husks attached, but he did not see any corn in the fresh produce section at all! I am somewhat doubting his grocery shopping abilities at the moment (how can they not sell corn?!) and am going to go check myself later on.

And yet another day goes by...

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Ech90
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Post   » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:15 pm


Good News and Not So Good News

I stayed out in the living room last night so that I could be nearer to their cage and be able to keep a closer eye on Buttercup. I could barely sleep at all, feeling so horrible every time that I heard her squeak and poo in pain. The squeaking seemed to be occuring much more frequently and much more loudly, which you can see in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHDGBhVx ... e=youtu.be

It is so sad seeing her little ears flap up and down as she is straining her body.

After what I had witnessed last night, I emailed her vet this morning to ask what we should do. I am bringing her in to see him tomorrow and she is actually going to be a "day case" (I drop her off around 8AM and pick her sometime in the afternoon) - I think this is so that the doctors have more time to observe her and see with their own eyes what is going on.

Her vet wrote to me:
I think the next step in the process would be doing bloodwork or radiographs to assess what is going on. I think the radiographs may give us a good indication if there is anything structurally going on with her pelvis, like a narrowing of the pelvis that is making it more difficult for her to defecate, or if she has a bladder stone that is making it difficult/painful for her to urinate or defecate.
I emailed him back asking how much he thought everything would cost and if he wanted me to bring in a stool sample so that he could run a fecal culture, and he responded:
The appointment for tomorrow would be $65 plus $20 for the cost of staying the day (for food, nursing care, etc.) If you brought another fecal sample, I could check it again for free to check for parasites since it would be a recheck. I am not sure how much the culture would end up being. The cost of the bloodwork is about $200, and the rads are about $200. If I had to chose which one to do first, I would pick the rads, just since she is so small I would want to make sure we weren't dealing with any major abnormalities to begin with. We can discuss what we should do tomorrow morning.
So, I guess the good news is that she is going in again tomorrow and we might finally get some answers. The bad news is that, at the moment, Buttercup isn't doing very well. We will see how things go tomorrow, I guess.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:23 pm


I was just going to suggest xrays. Glad to hear your vet is going to take them.

It is so discouraging to hear a guinea pig in pain. I hope your vet can get to the bottom of this (his prices look reasonable).

Bookfan
For the Love of Pigs

Post   » Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:26 pm


I'll be very interested to hear what the vet has to say after tests & observation.

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Ech90
Supporter in '13

Post   » Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:23 am


Dropped Bcup off at the Vet

Got back at around 8:30 but it took me forever to write this all up. Basically her vet said:

Buttercup’s size is very odd for her age, not even so much in terms of her weight but just the fact that she is so compact. The radiographs will let us know there are any bone abnormalities that can’t be felt when palpating her, for example, if her pelvis is abnormally narrow. This might make it difficult for her to defecate because it is going through a smaller hole, and the feces might have to compress and be the softer in order to pass through.

Also, the radiographs would show if she possibly has a bladder stone. Sometimes stones can be big enough that they press a little bit on the colon and the feces but that doesn’t happen very frequently – it would more likely be responsible for the pain response that she has when trying to go to the bathroom. They are also going to start her on a pain medication today.

If she does have a pelvic abnormality or some issue with her bones, they would preferably put her on pain medications for the rest of her life. The goal would be making her more comfortable.

He told me that I should finish this last week of Flagyl, but we can rule out any bacterial issues that the Flagyl would have gotten under control. He is going to send up a sample up to parasitology to have them recheck it for free, and he is also going to check with the microbiology lab about doing a fecal culture, but at this point I don’t think that he thinks it is a bacterial issue. Usually, if there is a different set of bacteria or there is something really wrong with the bacteria in the gut, the animal will have almost liquid diarrhea and will end up getting very sick and dying pretty quickly from that; Buttercup, on the other hand, has more of a soft, irregular stool. Other than when she is going to the bathroom and seems to be in distress, whatever she has doesn’t really seem to affect her systemically, which is a bit odd.

The bloodwork would show if she has any changes to her liver, kidneys, white and red blood cell count that make it irregular. If it shows that there is something wrong with them, then we could start thinking if her symptoms are because she has some sort of liver or kidney issue.

He is going to start off with the radiographs and then call me later in the morning, and we will talk about doing the bloodwork from there.

It sounds like the best case scenario would be that she has a bladder stone because that at least is treatable, but it isn't likely that this is what she has. If she has some sort of structural abnormality with her bones, there is nothing we can do to treat the symptoms and it would pretty much just be pain management for the rest of her life. If she has some sort of liver or kidney issue - well, I don't really know because we didn't talk very much about what the outcome for that would be, but I don't know if that would be treatable?

This is all so much to take in right now and I am very anxious to hear back from him. Piggy looks anxious too, walking back and forth in her cage and looking up at me quizzically, as if to say, "What's going on? Where is my sister?" Maybe she is just confused. I will let you know as soon as he calls me.

[Removed multi-paragraph bolding. Please don't bold large sections - it makes your post hard to read - Lynx]

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iastate09
Supporter in '15

Post   » Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:36 am


Good thoughts to Ms. Buttercup!

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