Rocky Has Pulmonary Abscesses

Hello Shackers,
I've been a bit MIA lately. Partially due to life being a big 'ol hot mess of chaos and whatnot.
Part of what I've been doing while away is trying to get a vet to believe something was wrong with Rocky. I don't want to talk about it much, due to the massive frustration that it all brings up, but I've known for a hot minute that ~something~ was wrong with my boy. I had suspected a heart problem moreso (although considered lung abscesses) and have brought him to multiple vets. The biggest symptom has always been his breathing - it always looked too hard to me. Not enough to be "respiratory distress" but just... not right. He would also sporadically make lung noises, but of course not when the vet was listening.
I got great responses such as "Oh he's just sniffing" "He's just excited" "It's not unusual for a rat to breathe this fast", etc etc. So I kind of just believed those vets and told myself to ignore it, he was fine.

But, he degraded a bit more (those little things we notice, not acting himself, eating less, the breathing hard was just driving me nuts, etc) so on Thursday, I finally brought him to Dspch's current vet. I'm very thankful to Dr. Golan and to Dspch (I know you & your boys have pushed her to do more research) because FINALLY a vet believed me.
She & her vet tech knew immediately that his breathing wasn't normal.

Anyway, we got him x-rayed and discovered some small abscesses in his lungs. Well, from what I understand, they could also be tumors, but I'm holding out for abscesses for now.
He got a nebulization treatment & oxygen while we were there, and for now he is on Baytril & Doxy (lifetime) and Theophylline (10 days).

He's doing better since Thursday, although still not great. I'm hoping he continues to improve and in about a month we will go back & see about getting another x-ray for progress.

I do have my own nebulizer now, although I need to pick up a solution from the vet. I also need to make a "chamber", but I've been sick as a dog myself so I am slow moving. He seems to enjoy a steamy bathroom for a few minutes for now.

I'm just glad he's finally diagnosed. It's so frustrating to know something is wrong, and others won't believe you.
He's been such a big love throughout these past few days. I had to keep my fingers in his carrier the whole way to the vet and back, he gripped them with both his paws. I think he still has some separation anxiety and fear that he'll be given up again.
He's spent hours just laying on my chest while I pet him over the past few days.

I'm mostly just posting to update some of you, who I think might want to know. For now, we stay the course and I can only hope he continues to improve.

Nebulization chamber ideas would be helpful too.
I think I've finally concocted a mix of food to hide his meds in that should be easy enough. He sure hates Baytril.

I'm glad you are finally able to start treatment for him. We, as our rats' caregivers, know when something is off with our babies. Good for you to keep trying to find an answer - it's difficult when doctors pooh-pooh your complaint and you know there is something wrong. I hope he feels better soon!

I agree w/ Joanne.

Wishing Rocky a quick recovery w/ his breathing. I take it that Rocky is the one interested in the puffs? They are both cute !

I don't believe in "the chamber" I always found my boys came out worse than they went in. You can just put him some where where he gets the mist and can breathe it in.

Glad that Rocky is now on meds and hope he will soon be feeling much better,
He looks like such a sweet boy

If you use a chamber you might want to do a search on this forum (and look for ideas on how to make it less stressful, because they are very stressful for rats
I used to have a nebulizer but only used it a couple of times because nebulizing makes rats with heart issues much worse
.... and in my experience heart problems are very common

good luck to you both

Joanne said:

I'm glad you are finally able to start treatment for him. We, as our rats' caregivers, know when something is off with our babies. Good for you to keep trying to find an answer - it's difficult when doctors pooh-pooh your complaint and you know there is something wrong. I hope he feels better soon!

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Thank you! :heart:
It is indeed hard, I kind of kick myself for believing them and "letting" it get worse. I guess it shows that intuition does play a factor in identifying these things.

2Rats said:

I agree w/ Joanne.

Wishing Rocky a quick recovery w/ his breathing. I take it that Rocky is the one interested in the puffs? They are both cute !

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Thank you! :heart: Yes, Rocky is the big hunky black man rat. That's little Pika in some of the pictures with him. :3

dspch911 said:

I don't believe in "the chamber" I always found my boys came out worse than they went in. You can just put him some where where he gets the mist and can breathe it in.

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Thanks for the input, Dspch. I didn't have the ability to go get a "chamber" anyways, so I passed on it. I can see how it could be horrifying, he freaked out at the sound of it alone. If he was feeling worse, maybe a smaller enclosed area would be better, but I don't think he /needs/ the nebulizer so much now.

SQ said:

Glad that Rocky is now on meds and hope he will soon be feeling much better,
He looks like such a sweet boy

If you use a chamber you might want to do a search on this forum (and look for ideas on how to make it less stressful, because they are very stressful for rats
I used to have a nebulizer but only used it a couple of times because nebulizing makes rats with heart issues much worse
.... and in my experience heart problems are very common

good luck to you both

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Thank you! :heart:
I did look at the boxes a bit and found a few examples. Just ended up deciding against it for the most part.

I got some of the nebulizer in him last night, I mostly just wanted to try it out. He really didn't enjoy the whole thing at first, but he ran into his hammock in the cage and I just held it outside the cage. He seemed to be interested in breathing it in once he was comfy in the cage. The girls were also very interested. XP

I think the current meds are really doing the trick. I really noticed his breathing was nearly normal last night.
Not sure the nebulizer did much either way, but I'm sure I'll try it out again (I did drop 70$ for the machine & serum, so might as well!)

This is what's in the nebulizing serum:
>Amikacin
>Acetylcysteine
>Aminophylline
& saline.
Which I had never heard of any before, but are apparently an antibiotic, a mucus reducer and a bronchodilator. I'll probably chase him around with it every other day for now, unless he declines.

Here's some videos of him shortly before we went to Dr. Golan:
https://youtu.be/7izly-ogDSc
https://youtu.be/_lNuuDOP_vQ
I'll get a video of him tonight to show the improvement.

I used the travel cage with a towel over it amd let the mist blow in the door through the bars. Mine too were afraid of the noise.

I have been crazy to, could be because I took in 48 rats last week. First rocky s ass is huge! omg he is so chubby so that is a good thing. You may want to talk to them about a steroid. we had great responses with our rats with PA. Also you need to use a different saline asking shelagh now. You can also do a run of azthiromycin for major flare up and it always seems to help. You can call me anytime with question. I have been so crazy lately i feel lost. Give those babies huges kisses for me.

That's the same nebulizer stuff we had - when it expires OMG does it smell bad!!

I talked to Dr. Golan yesterday, as she was giving me the news of our scrapings :-( she loved Rocky....

Once you establish a relationship she really good with giving you what you want/ask for.

hyper tonic saline is what helps with them. Youc an order a big bottle on line.

Any chance you can get him on Baytril and zithro combo as his forever meds? That seems to be the only thing that makes a difference on pulmonary abscesses. I too wouldn't bother with any chamber. Rats with decreased lung flow might very well panic and make things much much worse in the chamber. I've nebulized for years until one day, I finally accepted that it didn't do much at all for rats and in fact made things worse for my sick rats.
Poor sweet Rocky... I so love him.

Baytril + azithromycin (10 mg/Ib) orally, twice a day is a good combo
The azithromycin is by vet prescription from a pharmacy.

Please get this as it is a very effective combo

I'm at the vet now and they just got that azitho in stock yesterday for the first time. I am getting it for Hank and Streaker since their URI aren't responding to bayril/doxy. She had the owner order it after doing some research.

dspch911 said:

I used the travel cage with a towel over it amd let the mist blow in the door through the bars. Mine too were afraid of the noise.

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dspch911 said:

That's the same nebulizer stuff we had - when it expires OMG does it smell bad!!

I talked to Dr. Golan yesterday, as she was giving me the news of our scrapings :-( she loved Rocky....

Once you establish a relationship she really good with giving you what you want/ask for.

Click to expand...

dspch911 said:

I'm at the vet now and they just got that azitho in stock yesterday for the first time. I am getting it for Hank and Streaker since their URI aren't responding to bayril/doxy. She had the owner order it after doing some research.

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I might try the carrier method next time I nebulize. I would like to give it a chance and see if it helps, ya never really know. The crew is happy enough in the carrier, they go in it every week to transport to the playpen while I clean the cage.
Aww yes everyone loves Rocky haha. He's a babe.
I still can't believe your chaos with the ringworm ! Hopefully it won't be too much chaos when you dip them all!

hopefloats said:

I have been crazy to, could be because I took in 48 rats last week. First rocky s ass is huge! omg he is so chubby so that is a good thing. You may want to talk to them about a steroid. we had great responses with our rats with PA. Also you need to use a different saline asking shelagh now. You can also do a run of azthiromycin for major flare up and it always seems to help. You can call me anytime with question. I have been so crazy lately i feel lost. Give those babies huges kisses for me.

Click to expand...

hopefloats said:

hyper tonic saline is what helps with them. Youc an order a big bottle on line.

Click to expand...

LOL I saw you got all those hoarder rats! I still wish I could bring more rats home but my life is a joke as is. v_v
Rocky looks huge but I swear he isn't!! He's only 486 grams, shockingly. He loves food though.
He's eating normally again, he wasn't for a few days. That was scary.
I was going to call you and let you know sooner. But I've been so sick I can't actually talk without going into a coughing fit.
I'll grab some saline for the nebulizer. c:
Lots of smooches for the girls and Rocky from you. You'd laugh.. Remember how Theia screamed, scratched and peed upon being picked up? She still doesn't like it but she'll relax and let me hold her. No more pee-scratches. Rizzy hates being held. She's a fatty. Tiny Pika keeps taking after Rocky, trying to climb me like a mountain. ^_^

jorats said:

Any chance you can get him on Baytril and zithro combo as his forever meds? That seems to be the only thing that makes a difference on pulmonary abscesses. I too wouldn't bother with any chamber. Rats with decreased lung flow might very well panic and make things much much worse in the chamber. I've nebulized for years until one day, I finally accepted that it didn't do much at all for rats and in fact made things worse for my sick rats.
Poor sweet Rocky... I so love him.

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Did you only ever nebulize in the chamber or have you tried anything more free-aired / less stress?
Just the concept of being able to get more antibiotic and bronchodilator in him is intriguing to me. He doesn't like taking meds.
He's doing much better, see the video below. I know he looks scary bad in the first ones.

SQ said:

Baytril + azithromycin (10 mg/Ib) orally, twice a day is a good combo
The azithromycin is by vet prescription from a pharmacy.

Please get this as it is a very effective combo

Click to expand...

Thanks to you and everyone who is recommending Zithro.
I will be asking Golan if we can switch to it, I've already PMed Dspch to see if she has an email. If not I'll call. Probably won't be able to start him on it till Saturday.

Maybe I should ask about doing all 3 for a few weeks?
Any thoughts guys? Or is that too much on his poor tummy?
I think the doc will give me Zithro, don't see why not.



Here's a video from last night, I'm sure you all can see a difference:
https://youtu.be/_j0mJMYZ-IY
There's that big deep breath around 10 second mark (he would do those every 20 mins or so before, more infrequent now), but the overall has improved.

I've gotten some fan art recently, though I'd share as well:

Azithromycin isn't very effective alone. make sure you use it in combination with baytril

I use a bronchodilator with my rats at times. The one I use comes in a puffer.
I put my rat on my lap under my shirt and give a puff under my shirt while I pet my rattie.
They don't like it but it doesn't seem to cause a lot of stress and it works.

I give Lasix orally when I have a rat accumulating fluid in their lungs.

Cute paintings!

Just put in a call to ask for Zithro instead of Doxy and also requested a steroid for a few days.
She won't be in until tomorrow.
He seemed a bit worse last night. The cage was open for two hours and he spent 90% of it curled up in my arms. His breathing got a bit heavy too. I nebulized again, while he sat on my shoulder. Didn't seem to make a difference either way.

I also realized that the Doxy had been being dosed at 2.5mg/kg. No clue why I didn't check it sooner!! I checked the Baytril but just totally dropped the ball on checking the Doxy. I've upped the Doxy to 5mg/kg.

She has me doing doxy and zithro and stopping the baytril. I think all the research is starting to confuse her. Advice please - this is for our two uri boys that baytril/doxy isn't working on.

My boy Toby started with noisy breathing again so I started him on Baytril/Doxy. The symptoms resolved for a few days and I thought 'great!'. Then they came back and stayed. My vet did some reading and we dropped the Baytril, and added Azithromycin. We overlapped the zithro and doxy for five days, and then dropped the doxy. Now he is on the Azithromycin solely and he still makes the occasional noise. I am monitoring him to see if things completely resolve - it's only been a few days.

Thanks Joann, sorry Velo sorta thread jacked you