Hazel's medical thread

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Zaphy

Post   » Tue Mar 15, 2016 1:50 am


Yup! Though she is only on poop soup right now, no other medications. She is also no longer having any fresh veggies currently (but I am using vitamin C drops in her food so she doesn't get deficient in that area). She always has plenty of timothy hay to eat and is fairly good at eating it. She gets Oxbow alfalfa based pellets.

It's understandable not to read the whole thread, when they start getting to be multiple pages it's awful time consuming to go back and read the whole thing.

MsOsabear

Post   » Tue Mar 15, 2016 3:18 am


It really can be too many pages to go through, but it sounds like you are doing the right thing by increasing the fiber content of her diet. I know there was mention of her having a malformed GI tract possibly (although I don't know if you had that ruled out by her vet since I didn't get to read the whole thread). But I am wondering if maybe it was just that she never had vegetables before?

The vet that I took my cavy to (she will now be seeing a specialist on Wednesday) said that he often gets piggies that are put on new diets too soon and it will upset their tummies. So, I am just curious if it was her GI Tract itself or maybe just a combination of so many medications/probiotics and then a new diet (vegetables)

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:40 am


An occasional update that lays out the issue and treatment and new issues is helpful.

Still extremely important to keep everything on ONE thread.

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Tue Mar 15, 2016 10:35 pm


How's her weight? Gaining, losing, holding?

This really sounds a lot like our Heather.

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Zaphy

Post   » Wed Mar 16, 2016 5:06 pm


I really don't think the issue is with the vegetables given that when we've started her on them we've done it slowly and with such small amounts.

She's gained a little bit of weight, a few weeks ago she was pretty consistent at 540 or 550g, this week she's been weighing fairly consistently at 560 to 580g! So that's cool, though she is still pretty darn thin and I feel like she should still be gaining more weight than that especially given that she's still somewhat young (she's around 8 or 9 months old). What sorts of things did you have to rule out before coming to the hyperthyroid diagnosis?

Yeah, with how tedious it can be to read back a few pages I can't even imagine what it would be like to try to find multiple different threads! I'm thinking maybe it would be a good idea to put a summary of relevant issues/history every page or two, haha :)

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Wed Mar 16, 2016 10:18 pm


Heather had a small, palpable nodule in her neck/under her jaw/throat area, plus weight loss, the softish stool and a lush, thick coat. All of these are clinical signs of a thyroid nodule causing hyperthyroidism.

Our vet wasn't against trying to surgically remove the nodule if we wanted to, but she wasn't real keen on trying it either and it wasn't getting any larger, or at least not very quickly.

The definitive test for hyperthyroidism is a T4 blood test, which requires more than the 'standard' amount of blood (from a species which is very difficult to get blood from in the first place); it's a special request; not all labs can do it; and it's expensive. So we essentially "ruled in" hyperthyroidism rather than ruling it out. I think Heather did have a T4 done showing elevated levels, but my memory is hazy. I personally would not consider the blood confirmation an absolute necessity, especially in the presence of a nodule on or near the thyroid. MO only.

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Zaphy

Post   » Fri Mar 18, 2016 1:32 am


Hmm, well I don't feel any nodules around her thyroid area, especially if it would feel proportionally the same as a thyroid nodule feels on a human. It still could be hyperthyroid though I guess.

Hey Hazel broke 600g today! Woo hoo!

...she's still having super soft stools though.

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Fri Mar 18, 2016 3:15 am


Without reading back, have you tried poop soup? Is Violet off AB's now? If so, she could be a donor.

Congrats on the weight gain! :-)

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Zaphy

Post   » Fri Mar 18, 2016 5:02 am


Yeah, she's been on poop soup daily (Violet is an exceptional donor, she's always ducking under for cecal poops when I hold her) for the last couple weeks. It firmed up her stools really nicely at first, and now she's kind of back to her old ways even though she's still getting poop soup. It's the same way she reacted to the Bene-Bac.

Maddy_harper

Post   » Fri Mar 18, 2016 7:27 am


aww poor thing.

Talishan
You can quote me

Post   » Fri Mar 18, 2016 9:03 pm


Vary it. Keep her feet clean (yes, this is a mess and a lot of work. :-/). Then give her Bene-bac. Then keep her feet clean. Then use poop soup. Then keep her feet clean. Etc. Rotate between trying to treat the problem with different probiotics, and just letting it go (as long as she's doing fine otherwise, of course) and keeping her as clean as possible.

You can try this and see if she likes it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001BM1QR ... ios+powder

Dissolve it in water and offer it by syringe. It smells like reconstituted powdered milk. (?) They either love it or they hate it in my experience, no in-between.

Also without reading back, have her droppings been looked at under a microscope for any bacteria or microbes, or an overgrowth of normally-occurring microbes?

Have you considered metronidazole (Flagyl)? This is an antimicrobial agent that works well on protozoal overgrowths and the like.

I will say it's easier to keep feet and bedding clean with chronic soft stool if you use a loose bedding like CareFresh or kiln-dried pine shavings. If your entire system is set up for fleece, though, that comment is probably less than helpful.

:-/

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Zaphy

Post   » Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:56 pm


Mmm. So Hazel's been... interesting, and I am still worried about her especially over the last week.

To recap: Hazel has been struggling with diarrhea her whole life. She is about 10 months old. Poop ranges from malformed, slightly soft teardrop poops to softserve textured mush, never entirely liquid. We have tried:

-Introducing veggies slowly

-Eliminating veggies completely from her diet

-Introducing veggies one at a time to see if there's one in particular that's causing the upset

-Fecal and urine exam to check for parasites/flora imbalance, came back clean

-Probiotics: Bene-Bac powder and poop soup from my other pigs

-Restricting pellets so as to force her to eat more hay

-Keeping paper towel roll core in her cage for her to chew on/eat (indigestible fiber source)


The pellets she is being fed right now are Oxbow alfalfa pellets, to be replaced with timothy next time I buy a bag since she's getting older. She is fed timothy hay from a local feed store.

The probiotics, either one, will work for a little while- a few days up to a couple weeks, then her gut will go back to being bad. I've been alternating them since last post per Talishan's suggestion. She had actually been doing really well- she was hovering around 620g (up from 570) pretty constantly for a couple weeks!

***********************(end of recap)

Just last week she crashed a bit, stopped eating well so I had to force feed her. She lost some weight before I noticed and is now 550-580g. I took her to the vet and he told me to try no veggies for a month and a half along with restricted access to pellets and see if the longer period of diet restriction fixes it. He said if she needs something green, grass will do, so now her treat is some wheatgrass I got at the pet store. She doesn't like it as much as peppers, lettuce, apple, or carrot though, and when I give my other piggies their treats she begs so hard and it breaks my heart :( She also gets vitamin C drops in her pellets.

Something interesting he suggested was to keep the pellets in the fridge- though I don't think this has anything to do with her problem, because his reason was for that to slow the vitamin C deterioration in the pellets and he said he didn't see any signs of C deficiency when I asked about it. I think he's just about out of ideas though, he told me not to make another appointment if she's not better after six weeks and to just call him instead and he'd see what he could think up then.

I haven't tried the probios powder you suggested yet, Talishan- I'm thinking I'll try adding that into the rotation next time she gets bad. Her poops are currently teardrop/weird shapes.

Also, something unusual I've noticed over this last week is that her feet are often cold when I pick her up? None of my other pigs' feet ever feel cold so I assume that it's not just that we keep the apartment too cool... has anyone heard of that being a symptom of an underlying problem before? Nothing's come up in my Google searches.

Oh, and as an aside- vet checked her shoulder lump (she had an inexplicable solid lump, produced nothing upon lancing, that started regressing on its own) and says it looks good, nothing to worry about there. So that's nice at least.

Also have not tried Flagyl, since the poop smear/urine test came back clean. Are those usually pretty accurate, or might it be worth trying a round of Flagyl in case they missed something? It also might be worth noting that she's had this issue on and off since September of last year, I kind of assumed that any protozoa/worm/etc they missed would have killed her by now.

I do have fleece set up in their cages, but I've been so tired of trying to keep her hidey area clean that I took your advice and put paper bedding in to line it. It takes longer to clean up, and now she pees in there too instead of just in the litter box, but I do think her feet are generally cleaner for it. Still needs a foot bath every now and again, but less often. Thanks for the suggestion Talishan!

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