Posted by roo on April 30th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies
What an enormous delight (and not to mention the immense relief!) that Sienna played the spoiled princess all day today. As soon as she saw me coming down the stairs, she’d get up and lift her nose up in the air as if to say ’well, what do you have for me?’. She’d immediately check out what I had brought for her and commence munching. Lettuces, yoghurt chips, dandelion leaves, sticks of celery, kale, turnip greens, bring it on… in fact, bring MORE, because by the time I returned, it was all gone. To encourage her to eat even more hay I gave her a selection of three to choose from. Of course I would never let her get away with this under normal circumstances, but if spoiling her will get her to eat and be happy, and in turn HEAL, then so be it!
The vet called this evening, about the documentation that Oxbow had faxed her about the critical care formula. She felt that I really did not need her guidance with it and she’d photocopy it and mail it to me so that I could apply it as I saw fit. I took the opportunity to update her on how Sienna is doing, and she felt that things were going very well for her. She said that being patient and not rushing into one decision or another sometimes yielded surprising end results (my intial choices for Sienna were amputation or euthanisation), and that she had seen another two patients today with constricted leg injuries… who were not as lucky as Sienna.
I am so happy that today Sienna took control back over her leg, rather than let the leg control her. If she continues like this, I can only see a bright future for her!
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Posted by roo on April 30th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies
Before going to bed last night, I checked on Sienna one more time and found her hunched over in a corner of her cage, shivering and grinding her teeth. Her ears felt very cold to the touch. As I bent over to lay my hands on her ears to warm them up a little, I hear a belly growling. Wow, I thought… was that me? I didn’t think so! Listening a while longer I concluded that the sound came from Sienna.
Straight away I hit the internet and found that there could be several causes for this, all of them painful, but the end result was that there was a lot of gas in her intestines from an imbalance in her digestive system. Not surprising really, with all the stress she’s been under and not eating or drinking properly. The cure for taking the gas away was the same: simethicone.
Of course I didn’t know what this was, and wondered how safe it was… and how I was going to get a hold of it at that time of night with a sleeping child in bed? Then I discovered that it was merely an anti-gas drug that was available over the counter, safe for both adults and children. And a thought came to me. I ran upstairs and pulled out a bottle of mylicon drops for infants… the ingredients? Simethicone. I felt perfectly comfortable giving this to Sienna, knowing that you can’t overdose a baby on it, so it should be safe for my rabbit. I force fed it to her, mixed with water, in a small syringe. I covered her with a baby blanket to try and keep her warm, and decided to leave the door to the downstairs area open for the night so that the warmth could travel down to her. Truthfully, I did not have high hopes for her.
This morning I woke up, a little nervous to go downstairs and check on her, but I had nothing to worry about. She was hopping around her cage, munching on hay, and nudged my hand as I reached in to stroke her head. If I’d not know of the terrible battle she is undergoing right now, I would think she was a perfectly healthy, happy rabbit. I could honestly not believe it! When I offered her fresh greens, she ATE THEM ALL.
A friend recommended washing her leg with a surgical grade benadine scrub, which is a liquid soap-like product made specifically to wash wounds. What a great idea, I thought, for surely the people-soap I was using could be irritating her like crazy. I must have driven to 5 different pharmacies all over Huntsville and Madison, both chains and privately owned, before I finally stumbled upon a small family pharmacy that looked it up in the book and ordered it for me. It will be ready for me to collect first thing tomorrow morning.
I washed Sienna’s foot late this morning and can’t help but feel again that is is NOT dead. her nails have come out, but her foot is releasing lymphatic fluid and small amounts of blood right now, and to me that is a sign that her body is attempting to cleanse it from the inside. Surely if it was dead it would be blackened and not trying to heal itself? Would a dead foot feel warm like hers does? I rinsed it for a long time under the water. The vet had told me not to massage the healthy part of her leg when I asked if that could be beneficial, but I thought seeing the foot may not be as lost a cause at what it initially seemed, it may benefit from a little water massage. Sienna did not mind her foot being washed at all.
Her injection this morning went like a dream. I’m so glad I went and got the slightly bigger needles!
Enjoying the warmth of the lamp
Sienna and her leg
Close up of her leg
Washing and grooming
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Posted by roo on April 29th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies
It’s been a rocky day. After eating some of her greens this morning, she touched nothing else, not even water, and I began to research ‘critical care’ online. Critical care is a mixture that you feed rabbits by syringe when they are ill or recovering from surgery. She was a little cold all day, probably due to me clipping her coat off and the warm summer temperatures we’ve been having suddenly disappearing today. As much as I could, I tried to keep her under one of Jesse’s old baby blankets. Every time I went downstairs to check on her, I held my breath as I approached the cage, until I saw the blanket under which she was laying moving up and down.
Of course I was unable to find critical care here in Huntsville, so I rushed out to get canned pumpkin and a couple of jars of baby food, in case I had to force feed her this evening.
While Jesse was taking a bath I warmed up some mashed pumpkin, then quickly ran downstairs to get her. As I descended the stairs I could hear a grinding sound, and found her tearing at the hay in her hayrack, munching on it with great gusto. I found it a little hard to believe seeing Sienna rarely eats hay! She was alert and moving around, and not wanting to disturb her desire to eat, decided not to interfere by feeding her the pumpkin by syringe.
I have a sinking feeling that she is not going to make it, but I am trying hard to remain positive for Sienna’s sake. Positive thoughts and faith can make a big difference.
On a different note, I went to the farm supply store to get heavier gauge needles for the penicillin injections - the 25 guage that the vet gave me are just terrible, they won’t push the medicine through because they are so thin. Jasper, who seems to have an abcess under his jaw, was started on penicillin also today and again it took a handful of pricks before I could finally get the medicine in. At one point I was so frustrated that I tried to push the plunger down while holding it pointed into the air, to see if it was indeed stuck, and sure enough, I couldn’t depress it. I pushed until the needle flew off from the pressure! That confirmed to me that the needle was simply too thin to allow the thick medicine to flow out.
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Posted by roo on April 29th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies
Sienna was bright and alert this morning, sitting on the other side of the cage from where she had been hunkering down in the hay the past few days. She had no problems being removed from her cage and I took her upstairs to bathe her injured back leg. It is not pretty, and it doesn’t smell too good either, but she allowed me to wash it, put soap on it, rinse it. But I had difficulty rinsing the soap off, so I decided to clip her short all over. This would allow me to wash her properly around her leg, and it would help with keeping her clean seeing she can’t manouvre herself into the litterbox right now. After I clipped her I rinsed her leg one more time to make sure there was no remaining soap residue and took her downstairs for her penicillin injection. I made a tent in the back of her neck and managed to depress the plunger the first time, much to my relief, after which I let her run around a bit on the table behind the couch, which is covered with a heavy plush blanket that the rabbits like to lay on. To my utter surprise, I watched her hopping without any trouble, and just as I said out loud ‘wow, is she actually USING that leg?’ she sat still for a moment and used her bad leg to scratch herself behind her ear. What? I thought the vet had said that the leg was already dead? She is continuing to clean her leg, and was nibbling at her greens this morning after I put her back in her cage. I also noticed that she had been drinking from her water bottle. Fingers crossed she continues to do this well for the next 2 weeks!
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Posted by roo on April 28th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies
Sienna ate perhaps only a quarter of the vegetables I put in front of her. Seeing she had not been drinking from her water bottle today, I’d left as much water on the veggies as I could. I even resorted to giving her a piece of watermelon, thinking she may just eat it because of the sweetness. She sniffed at it and ignored it, so I gave it to Nomi who ate it in a flash (he’s like a garbage disposal, I swear!).
I checked on her repeatedly today to stroke her head and send her some healing thoughts, and to peek at the water bottle and bowl of veggies to see if any of them had gone down. The vet had exclaimed surprise this morning when I told her that yes, Sienna was still eating and drinking. This was part of the reason that she suggested the antibiotic treatment - Sienna looked to be fighting this because the foot was advanced to a point where the vet had not expected her to still be eating. So of course with the truly diminished appetite and no water being sipped from the bottle, I was getting increasingly anxious.
Then, this evening when I checked on her, she was alert and got up to greet me when I opened her cage door. I stroked her head and glanced at the bottle… still full. My heart sank. Earlier I had removed the uneaten heap of veggies and split them between Jasper and Nomi. After I withdrew my hand she turned and commenced to eat pellets out of her bowl. My heart leaped up so high with hope that I almost yelped out loud. What a fantastic sign!
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