Lily's Medical Thread

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 4:54 am


Sigh... Okay, this one was my fault. I made a terrible mistake and put my most murder-y pig in the wrong cage. Flying ball of fur happened, and Lily was left with a small bite wound.

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I trimmed the hair around it to hopefully prevent the hair matting and scabbing to the wound. It wasn't bleeding much, so I flushed it with saline from a syringe since the cut is open, and applied rubbing alcohol, then betadine, then coconut oil (am out of neosporin and wanted to attempt to disinfect the wound).

Three hours later I went to check on the wound again (this is the time I took the above picture), I noticed some blood down lower in her coat. I trimmed more hair down around that and discovered another side to the puncture that I hadn't noticed before.

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Looks like the pig's teeth met in the middle- as I cleaned the second one I discovered that if I syringed saline into the top hole, it dribbles out the bottom. So I flushed it again. I think it had to have been flushed through a little bit the first time I cleaned it, as I was squirting fairly directly into the hole. Obviously since I didn't know about the bottom wound, I didn't see it so I can't be sure. But I flushed fairly thoroughly this time, moved a good amount of saline through the wound, and then applied the same alcohol/betadine/coconut oil treatment again.

Now that I know the wound is much larger than I originally thought, I'm not super sure that it's not a vet-worthy wound. I was planning on continuing to treat it this way and taking her in if I noticed signs of infection setting in, but wanted to run it past the medical forum just in case...

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:16 am


Flushing with warm sterile saline should help. Most important, you know about the wound and can keep it clean and make sure it does not get infected and close up.

So this is Lily's first medical thread? I hope she stays healthy!

I can add your pics permanently if you'd like.

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:17 pm


I hope she does, too!

The vet gave us some Bactrim. So I've just started her on that, which does give me a little peace of mind about it. Especially since it's all closed up this morning already. I'll just continue rinsing the outside of the wound- still looks pretty good this morning, no more inflammation on the skin around it. Here's a photo (pardon the Betadine stain):

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I'll be monitoring her poops and will start her on poop soup if they start to be irregular.

Feel free to add my pics! Thank you!

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 5:12 pm


It's so helpful having a light colored guinea pig! You can see the injury easily and will be able to monitor it well.

I will be interested to know how it heals. Quite surprising the teeth bite met so flushing went in one hole and out the other! I imagine it was painful.

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 6:47 pm


Indeed- though surprisingly, the only thing she reacted to was when I flushed through with the saline! She didn't cry right after being bitten (just went back to munching hay, in fact), she didn't react when I swabbed the wound, like really got in there with the q-tip soaked with alcohol... but when I flushed it with saline she squealed and spun in circles trying to bite and paw at it, poor thing. I didn't expect that to be the most painful part!

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:11 pm


I imagine the teeth carry enough bacteria that it was wise to clean and flush it. Too bad it hurt - but you did the right thing!

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Zaphy

Post   » Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:32 pm


Very happy with how it's healing so far.

Image

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon Jan 23, 2017 9:47 pm


Excellent!

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Zaphy

Post   » Sat Apr 21, 2018 1:11 pm


Last night ~1:30AM Lily had a small amount of blood coming from her bottom (it's ALWAYS Friday night after the vet closes!!). Just a few drops, bright red- of course I couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from; when I saw it and checked her it was all in the crevices/cracks around the anal/vaginal area. She was active, eating/drinking/trying to hump her sisters and I saw her urinate a couple minutes later, so didn't take her in to the ER and put her in the quarantine cage overnight (and stayed up for a few more hours stresseating/making sure she was still urinating). The blood hasn't come back since, and her overnight poops and urine look and smell normal.

Fortunately my second choice vet's office is open on Saturdays. I'm not a *huge* fan of the vet that's in today, not that he's a bad vet or anything, just that I suspect it's a "vet that sees exotics, not vet specializing in exotics" kind of situation with him- the exotics vet that I like at that practice wasn't in today. So here I am. He advised to just keep an eye on it over the weekend since it was just a few drops and the urine/feces/activity are normal. His thinking is that it doesn't sound like an emergency, and may have just been a small exterior injury and thus a fluke. I'm probably planning on doing that and then calling first choice vet on Monday morning to get their opinion as well.

With the more concerning causes of blood coming from that area, it's more constant than just a few drops right? Or is there not really a 'standard' of how much blood is more concerning? She is a long-haired pig and though I try to keep her buttfur trimmed it does get too long sometimes, so UT/RT infection definitely jumped into my mind. And stones of course, which can be very frightening very quickly.

Unrelated side note: Last month or so, we realized that Lily is deaf. Not sure if she's always been- she can see when the other pigs react to auditory cues and go with them when I come to bring in treats, so we might have just not realized. I am pretty sure this is not concerning unless it occurs alongside head tilt so I have not done anything about it but wanted to make a note of it anyway.

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Sat Apr 21, 2018 1:33 pm


While most pigs don't bleed during a heat cycle, a few do. If you don't see any more blood, I wouldn't worry about it. Keep an eye on it and see if it recurs in about two weeks or so.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sat Apr 21, 2018 5:18 pm


Ditto bpatters. I hope it is not an issue and does not or seldom recurs.

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Zaphy

Post   » Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:53 am


Hmmmmm.... So Lily is 5 years old now. She's begun passing blood more often, normally just a couple drops and not every heat cycle. About one month ago I found that she had passed a larger amount of blood- a couple spots in the cage about 4 or 5 inches in diameter (the spots being composed of blood smudged about, not a cohesive puddle if that makes sense). Took her to the vet, ruled out stones via radiograph, and decided to try a round of Bactrim. It may be worth noting that I found the blood at night and took her to the vet the next morning, and the bleeding appeared to have stopped on its own before the appointment. So I am not sure if it would have come back if we hadn't started the antibiotics. Also of note is that her demeanor never declined during this episode.

This evening I found her again having produced a similar amount of blood. Notably, she appears to have passed a few globs of bloody mucus- I assume this is the cervical plug (the amount is consistent with that) and that the issue is reproductive after all. She again still seems bright enough- she's begun showing her age so she isn't exactly popcorning around, but she is mobile and eating- caught her chewing the plastic on the litterbox so I expect she is probably not feeling great, but I think it is not 'emergency vet' bad. Going to call the vet in the morning of course, hopefully they're still taking walk-ins during all the pandemic shenanigans, but also wanted to post here- if nothing else, it at least helps to muse "out loud", as it were.

I am guessing a recurring infection is still possible? So it might be worth trying another round of antibiotics- last time we did a 7 day course of Bactrim (they overfilled the bottle a bit so it ended up actually being 8/9 days or so). Maybe a longer dose this time? I am also guessing though that the more likely scenario here is ovarian/uterine/etc cancer or cysts. If that is the case, I am not willing to go through with a spay. I know some people have spayed older guinea pigs successfully, but with Lily my gut says it's not a good idea and I'm going to trust that. Hormone treatments for cysts.... maybe? I've not gotten the impression that they're a very dependable option. I feel that probably the best thing to do for Lily if this isn't something that can be fixed with antibiotics is palliative care. But I suppose we'll see.

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