Caring for a sick rat

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M

mactep

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Our Mishi (a female rat) is pretty sick for more than 2 weeks now. She is about 16 months old. She is our first pet rat, so we are not very aware how the things are supposed to go. We love her very much and want to do what is best for her, so we are open to ideas and propositions.

We have been to the vet clinic several times, but you know how most vets are when it come to rats. :( Rats are not very popular pets around here, so our baby didn't get much attention. Sorry I cannot give more specific information about the drugs they gave her but the veterinarian wasn't very explanatory. However he was the only one we found how who had some experience with rats. They diagnosed her with respiratory infection and started a therapy with antibiotic injections + supplement injections every 24 hours. We have done this for about 10 days. She get a bit better and most of her symptoms disappeared. However, during this 10 days, she lost a lot of weight and at some point stopped eating and drinking water.

She is barely walking and it is very hard for her to stand on her legs. So we visited the vets again because we were very afraid that she is dying. They said that the breathing is much better and the infection is gone. The problems with her heart. From what we managed to get (as I told you, the doctor isn't very explanatory), infection has affected the heart and she is having a cardiomyopathy. They injected her with some meds and prescribed 1/8 pill of Vetmedin (Pimobendan) and 1 drop of Vitamin B Complex once a day.

We are treating her with this for 4 day now but it didn't look that she is improving. She is extremely weak now. She is barely walking and it is very hard for her to stand on her legs. She don't eat and drink anything even from our hand. She is not eating solid food for about 2 weeks now, but we give her some yogurt and other soft foods during this time. We plan to start syringe feeding her from tomorrow. The other problems is that the last few days she have a lot of porphyrin around her eyes.

From what I see, she wants to live. She is grooming herself constantly. It is pretty hard for her sometimes because she falls, but she is smart and managed to adapt, using he cage walls as support. She often gets out of her house and walks around the cages (2 weeks ago she didn't want to get out, so we have progress here). When we get her out of her cage, she is going around exploring with interest. However we are not getting her much, because the vets told us that every movement is hard for her and costs her a lot of energy.



So what do you thing about our case? Any ideas what we can expect?

How long is the recovery process from cardiomyopathy after the treatment we are applying?

Do we need some other meds?

What we can do to speed up the recovery?

How much water should we give her with syringe and on what intervals?

How much food should we give her with syringe and on what intervals?

What foods we should give her? We plan to give her yogurt (feeding her this for last 2 weeks), mashed potatoes (she loved it before getting sick), ground vegetables.

I have read that rats love baby food. Do you mean baby formula?

Should we take her out of her cage to walk and play with us?
 
Can you upload a video to YouTube or some other site and put up the link?

Can you check the invoices to see what invoices were injected? or do you still have the bottles?
 
Yes, I can make a video and upload it. Can you tell me what specifically you need me to shoot?

On the invoices they only wrote "medications". We don't have the bottles, because they injected her. I can ask my wife to call the clinic to see if they give us more information about the meds.
 
A few things:
- rats usually take meds orally, antibiotics are given orally, twice a day for 6 weeks if they are helping ..... baytril + azithromycin (10 mg/Ib) orally, twice a day for 6 weeks if it is helping is an effective combo for resp. infections

- with heart disease, some vets give pimobendan. Benazepril and atenolol are often given orally twice a day, and lasix is given twice a day (or as necessary) orally if fluid ids collecting in the lungs.

If she is having difficulty eating try:
- soaking her rat blocks in cold water to make mush
- feed her organic soy infant formula, thickened with baby cereal (the kind that says add milk), sold in infant sections of grocery stores. If you can not find that anywhere then some people feed meal supplements meant for humans such as ensure - but the organic soy infant formula is healthier imo ....... if she can not eat it try to get her to lick it off your finger, it can also be given by needless syringe by putting a tiny bit into the side of her mouth so it does not go down into her lungs. Organic soy infant formula has nutrition and will also help to keep her hydrated.
- other foods she might like in addition to the above are baby food, and soft foods such as cooked & mashed sweet potato, cooked squash, cooked grains, cooked oatmeal

It sounds like she is dehydrated.
When you gently pull up the skin on the back of her neck and let go, does it snap back into place? If it doesn't she is probably dehydrated.
Here is a formula for a rehydration formula
Lilspaz68 wrote in another thread "Homemade rehydrating formula: 10 oz warm water, 1 tsp sugar, 1/3 tsp salt. Mix well, refrigerate extra, warm up to feed. "

You can feed her the above formula or water by giving it to her by syringe, a drop at a time, into the side of her mouth so it does not go down into her lungs

Jorats and Lilspaz68 can give you better advice then me (I have messaged them about your post)
but I would suggest that you give her as much as she will take, by syringe. And when she has had enough, wait a short while and offer her more until she has had enough, then offer her more a short while later, and continue doing this
A knowledgeable vet should be able to give her sub-Q fluids, teach you how to and sell you the equipment ... an adult rat can be given 6 ml of sub-Q fluids

If she has a heart issue, did they say anything about fluid building up in her lungs?
What does she sound like when you hold her up to your ear and listen to eat side of her chest?
Does she use a lot of effort to breath?
Can you post videos of her breathing and her activity?

As long as she is comfortable with it, I am sure that she would benefit from being held and cuddled by you, this is especially important if she is not living with other rats

Edit:
Here is some info:
http://ratguide.com/health/cardiovascular/cardiomyopathy.php
http://ratguide.com/meds/cardiovascular_drugs/pimobendan.php
http://ratguide.com/health/bacteria/mycoplasma_mycoplasmosis.php
http://ratguide.com/health/lower_respiratory/pneumonia.php
 
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I would try to get her on oral enroflaxocin (baytril) and azithromycin. Antibiotics for respiratory issues really need to be given for at least 4 weeks, 6 weeks preferred.
For food, you can give baby food and baby cereal as well.
 
Thanks a lot SQ!!!


It is really hard to find a vet with even little rats experience here. We have gone trough several vets and they don't even examine rats. So the treatment that the vet give her is probably not the best but she is still alive, so it is something. Reading the internet forums I see that it happens to a lot of people. The vets that checked out Mishi only used a stethoscope on her and didn't do any additional tests. So I presume that his diagnosis is more a guess.

When the vets give her subcutaneous injections for the infection, they give her about 0.1ml of antibiotics and about 0.2ml of vitamin supplements. They told us that this is enough and we should not worry that she didn't drink water.

When I hold her, I can hear her heart beating very fast. My experience with rat's health (and other pets too) is zero, so I don't know what is normal and what isn't.

Here is a short video of her at the moment. Sorry for the shaking and bad quality. We will do more videos tomorrow. We will be very grateful if you can tell us on what to emphasize in the videos.


The black spot that you can see on her neck is a wound from the subcutaneous injections. The vets told us to treat it with "Jodasept".

We cuddled her as often as we can, so at least we got this covered. Thanks for the links. I have read everything in http://ratguide.com/ health section last few weeks. But as I mentioned above... my experience is zero, so I don't want me make decision on my own.

Vetmedin S 1.25 mg pills. We are giving her 1/8 pill once every 24 hours.



How often should we give her from the rehydration formula? And how many ml per "serving"?
 
It looks like you have her on some sort of wood shavings in the video, what kind are they? Anything other than Aspen is not recommended for rats and I personally stay away from shavings altogether. I would recommend using some soft material or a towel as her bedding to make her more comfortable.

Give her as much as the rehydration liquid as she’ll take as often as you can.

Also, try to give her a piece of food and see if she’ll hold it in her paws. If you can, please take a video of this.
 
I don't know what kind of wood shavings we are using. Tomorrow I will ask my wife about it, because she is buying it. From what I have read when we first got Mishi, it is important that the shavings don't have fine particles in them. These don't. Is there something else I should know about the bedding? What soft materials other than towel are you using? I have read other people talking about using towels and old t-shirts as bedding. Is is good idea? When she was better, Mishi loved to play with her shavings.

She can't stand on her feet, so holding food isn't something she can do at the moment. She even have some difficulties drinking water from her bottle. I tried giving her food 2 weeks ago when she had more energy, but her paws were too weak. Then I trough that it was PT because it was the first thing I saw when I searched for her symptoms... Two weeks later, most of these symptoms are gone.
 
Oh well that’s great to hear because I was thinking PT as well. Most wood shavings have phenols in them that can cause damage to the lungs after time, but at this point I worry that she might find them annoying when she’s feeling bad. Yes, old shirts and clothes would be a great addition to the towels to keep her warm and for her to cuddle up in.
 
The wound on the back of her neck tells me she got repeated injections of baytril (which unless is heavily diluted with saline can cause tissue necrosis also called "baytril burn".

With heart issues you have to either see VERY obvious symptoms or x-ray the heart. Listening with a stethoscope won't work for diagnosis.

Unfortunately my suspicion and your gut was right. Your lass has PT. Can you convince these vets to try steroids to start? They can inject dexamethasone (1 mg/kg) every day for a day or 3 and if she responds you could try asking them for a prescription for 2.5 mg tablets of bromocriptine. She would get either half a tab once or day or 3 mg/kg if you make up a solution.

For now start rehydrating her with the formula and offer her soft foods. If she can't eat out of a dish you can buy Ensure and mix it with a little baby cereal and syringe it into her.

Her young age of 16 months means you might have a better response to treatment.
 
Thank you for your response Shelagh. It is not what I wanted to hear, but it is better to understand what the problem is, so we can start the right treatment as fast as we can.

We can try with the vet but we will need some arguments convincing him. Can you please help us with this, because neither me nor my wife have any medical experience with pets and it is impossible to argue with medical professionals. You know... everyone have ego, and telling someone that he may have been wrong in his diagnosis is a hard path. The vet we took her to is very experienced with other pets. He is the owner of a chain of veterinary clinics and have more than 25 years of experience as veterinarian. He is quite busy with surgeries and not very talkative. But from what I have read about him, he loves animals. So if we present him with enough information he may agree to do the steroid treatment.

On our first visit (2 weeks ago), I told him about the problem with the weak paws but he was quite sure that she had a respiratory infection. At that time Mishi had a lot more symptoms of PT than now. She was wobbling and going around in circles (she doesn't do this anymore). Head bumping is also gone now. She is pretty aware about the environment around her. When Mishi is out of her cage, she is aware of the edges of the bed or the table. In https://www.ratshackforum.com/threads/please-help-possible-case-of-pt.35215/page-2#post-492467 Luna&Ralph said it is a good sign. I was following Mishka's topic, we are both from Bulgaria and as she mentioned, it is very hard to find a vet working with rats.

Is this improvement because of the antibiotics they give her? When the vet checked Mishi last time, once again he was very convinced, that the problem is with her heart. What we may accept as VERY obvious symptoms for cardiomyopathy? She have almost all symptoms listed in http://ratguide.com/health/cardiovascular/cardiomyopathy.php From what he told us, she is having a very increased heart rate. He explained to my wife that Mishi is not moving very much, because it is taking her a great effort to do so and she is getting tired after every movement. This way she was saving energy.
 
The symptoms of cardiomyopathy that you linked do somewhat overlap with the symptoms of PT, so I can see the confusion. The thing about pituitary tumors is that the symptoms can worse and lessen so it doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t have one if the symptoms get better, unfortunately. It’s also possible that one of the medications that your vet gave her was a steroid like prednisone. I have seen prednisone used before for a dog with heart disease, so your rat’s symptoms may be getting better because she’s responding well to steroids, which would be great because it will help you to know how to continue treating her.
 
I'm still seeing PT, and it's getting closer to end stage. Can you yourself get your hands on prednisone tablets (yours,families, friends cupboards?) If your vet refuses to treat her?
I would just tell the vet that you want to TRY the steroid. Rats can have multiple issues just like people, so it doesn't mean you are saying the vets treatment was wrong but she might have PT as well. See if that approach works?
 
Our vets are complete idiots... and this is very good word for them. I will take care of them... these people should never treat rats... We were there today and we are very disappointed. They refused to treat her at all... Their comments were something like "it's just a rat". For us, it isn't just a rat... she is part of our family.

We have found another clinic and they want me make some tests on her tomorrow. Blood screening, scanners, and etc. They said that it can be at least 10 different issues with her.They want to make some test and see what happens. They also confirmed that it is impossible to diagnose her with only stethoscope.

So lets see what they will find tomorrow...

I am very angry at the moment... so it is better if I don't write anything more today...
 
I am so sorry for your experience with vets in your country. It sounds incredibly frustrating to deal with on top of a sick pet, but it sounds like your new vet is much more open minded. Hopefully you will be able to get the proper diagnosis and medications there.
 
Yes they are very aware of rats... their nurse had a pet rat who lived 4 years... which in what I have read is incedible.

It is very hard on us at the moment that we didn't got to them at the beginning. It is out mistake and we will remember it forever. I have learned a lot of this situation...
 
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