penis plugs=serious health problems?-RIP guild

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T

twitch

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2008
Messages
1,485
Location
Dartmouth, NS
i just looked in the cage and found guild gasping for breath. his whole body moving in the effort to breathe. when i hold him to my ear his lungs sound bad, there is a definite crackle with each labored breath. there is diarrhea, and there was a huge penis plug. he was fine and active and perfectly normal at supper time. there's no drool or poryphrin. his eyes are squinty. i noticed no problems with him for the entire time i've had him. no fast breathing, kept himself nice and clean. i don't know what happened. its so sudden. i have two theories, one, he's been sick but hid it too damn well as rats sometimes do or two, the penis plug inhibited his ability to pee and things got backed up or something like that. the emergency vets know nothing about rats. i'm putting him on rose's dose of amoxil now. he will see a vet with rat knowledge tomorrow if i have to drive all the way to sussex to get to her. would a steam room help now or would it make it worse? he has good color on the limbs and the tail and ears are of normal temperature to the feel. all toes are nice and pink. but he's also just sitting beside me as i write this, he doesn't do that. he's normally the first off the couch and onto the floor. he looks sick and he is feeling sick. tongue is pink, i can't get a good look at the gums. he doesn't seem to be in acute resp distress in that way at least but he is certainly in distress.

my vet, though the best in the city is still not up to par with some others that i have read about on here. she's the best we have though and have to work with her on it. she listens to me. i can get her to look things up but i need to be able to direct her in the right places. obviously we treat for resp issues as normal but if there is something more that needs attention from the penis plug? curse it being 1 in bleeding morning! most of you guys won't even be one right now.... urgh...

i've dealt with resp issues. i've dealt with a lot of resp issues. i've even succeeded in a few of them. but its never hit this hard this fast. there was absolutely no other signs. he was fine and then this. like i said, his breathing didn't even look fast eariler today. not one sign of this until just now.
 
Sending lots of healing vibes out to your little guy. I really don't know what to suggest. Dark chocolate? It probably wouldn't hurt to help him with the penis plug if you can. Maybe he's breathing like that cause he's in pain?
 
i cleaned out the penis plug. he should be feeling much better from that gone, its how i know how large it was. i wasn;t expecting him to have a problem in that area as he's fairly young, a good groomer and i thought he was healthy. when he started breathing like that i made a complete check and that's how i found the plug. how fast do those things grow? the only other male that i've had so far that had one was zen and that wasn't until he started to go really down hill and had trouble grooming. guild never seemed to have any trouble with that.
 
Hi twitch, how's the little guy this morning? The penis plug does not stop urination and they can come on real fast and be real big so it doesn't mean it was there a while. Could he have chocked on something?
Keep him warm and eating things like Ensure, baby cereal.
 
Hope he's doing better this morning. How awful for you that it happened when everybody was asleep. You did a very thorough checkup, though, and you seemed to be doing all the right things.
 
he was no better this morning but i was able to get him into the vet @ 10:15am. rianna met me there. the decisions were all hers but i agree with them. it was discovered that guild had intestinal cancer, and suspected that it had mastastised in the lungs as well. there were fluid in the lungs as well. because of the cancer and the advanced feel of it and because of the suspicion that it has already moved onto the lungs rianna made the difficult decision to let guild go now before he suffered anymore. she is having him cremated and his remains returned to her through the vet office. we're both very upset with this. i knew it was bad, but i was not expecting this. when i felt the lump this morning my worst fear was that i was feeling some inflamed organ or something like that. i refused to think of it further and completely denied the possibility of cancer to the point that i didn't even think about it.

i feel so... wrong is the best i can say for it. guild was rianna's and so it was not me making the decision (though it would have been the same) and it was not me holding him as he passed on or any other ritual that i go through with my passing babes. i sat and talked to rianna about rats and this and that. it was comforting for us both to be there and i'm thankful rianna let me stay with them. but it all feels so odd now. i'm typing this sitting on the bed beside the blanket and food dishes and syringe that guild used all night. he was just there. right there. and i know he's gone and i know he'll never be back and it feels so odd. i feel out of place. like the world is there but i'm somehow removed from it. and i feel so guilty. logically, rationally i know i shouldn't. that i did all i could. but i think the early deaths of the last few, the absolute helplessness of it all with zen, rosie, guild, and lydia. i know i did all i could, in some cases all that i could do was love them. but emotionally i feel like i failed them. zen was 14 months. guild was 13 months. rosie and lydia were older but i didn't have enough time with them to show them all the love they deserved, especially bright lydia who was not even with me 24 hours before her passing. i knew zen was very ill when i took him on. i knew he was on the short list but he was fine as he was all that time in the shelter. then i get him here and he's gone so soon. i almost feel that if he had just stayed where he was, that somehow he would still be alive. i know it doesn't make any sense. he would have gotten sick there just the same as here. the place does not make a difference. and then guild. he was just fine, completely normal until 1am last night. i never noticed the lump before now and i feel like i should have. that if i had we would have been able to do something more somehow. that i would have been able to do more. but they are all gone, i couldn't save any of them. i couldn't do anything. it just feels so wrong.
 
I know how you feel twitch...It is such an awful empty feeling. Like you should have done more but what....there wasn't anything else to do. I am so sorry...I wish I could say something to make you feel better but just know I care....I think you are wonderful for all that you do.....You give them everything you can...That is all any of us can do.
hugs to you.......
 
I am so sorry. That awful misplaced guilt and all the "if only" thoughts seem to be part of the grieving process for so many of us. Maybe it's easier to blame ourselves than to think about how powerless we are against cancer. It stuns me how fast a rat can go from healthy-looking to near death. We can't help but think we must not have been watching carefully, but it happens in hours.

It was wonderful that Riana could be there with you & Guild, and a relief to know that his time of suffering was short. He was a real sweetheart, and you both will miss him. I hope that Rose is OK.

Hugs to you. You've been an awesome foster mom to those ratties.
 
Oh no....so many things can go wrong with our babies, internal masses and cancer is just one of those things we really can't do anything about. But I sure do know the guilt you talk about, and just being a zombie, unaware of the life going on around you. Just just exist but yet can't participate... not yet.
I'm so sorry Twitch and Riana.
 
Well Raven has already explained what had went on, so there's no need to repeat that.

It was such a shock to be woken up first thing this morning with the call from Raven saying that Guild was ill. At first I thought she had made a mistake and had meant Rose, because besides the sneezing and one bout of respiratory trouble, Guild has always been healthy. So I got there just moments before Raven did. I was really surprised by how badly he was. He was just completely drained, gasping for breath, just overall the exact opposite of what Guild was. Even when he was sick before he was still the little trouble-maker he always was, trying to jump off the table, etc.

It was Raven who had discovered the tumor, and I'm immensely thankful that she did. Without her noticing, I think our (for I feel he is just as much Raven's now as he is mine) little guy would have just been suffering while we tried to get him over this hurtle with getting his breathing under control, and it would have killed him eventually. I'm glad we could have saved him from all of that. On one hand I wonder if we had given up too easily: I think that maybe if we had taken him home and treated him he could have lived for a while and been fine, even persevered over the tumor and lived happily. But I know that is unrealistic thinking, and it wouldn't have been humane for him. I know it wouldn't have turned out like that, so it was the best decision for him to do what we did.

I have seen far too many cases in working at the vets of people keeping their animals alive longer than they should when the prognosis was bleak and the animal wouldn't have had a good quality of life between then and when it died. I vowed I'd never do something like that. A cancer prognosis or something similar isn't an immediate death-warrant, but if the animal couldn't have a good quality of life between then and the day they died, I think that is when the animal should be put down.

So, it was a big shock. It was unexpected that he would get sick so quickly, unexpected that he had a tumor, and unexpected that he was put to sleep in such a short frame of time. But I feel at peace knowing that it was best for him.

Raven, I hope you know how much of a sensational person you are. You do so much for these little creatures, as well as for others. You are a blessing. You go a far greater distance with these little animals than I have seen a lot of people do for dogs and cats. You will exhaust every last option if it's in your power to do so, yet you also know when it is time to let go if it is in the best interest of the animal. Please don't think that you didn't do enough, not just with Guild, but with any of the babies you've had. With Guild it was just far too sudden and too serious of a diagnosis. With your other rats it was just that their little bodies were no longer able to keep going. You did do everything you could do with every one of them, it just turned out that their little bodies wouldn't hold up even with all of that. I am thankful that you went out of your way to help me with these boys even though you didn't have to. I'm thankful that you have been willing to treat Rose, and I'm thankful that you were ready to treat Guild if we needed to.

I'll post a tribute to this little guy in the very near future. Raven, if you would like to, you're welcome to write one too, and we can post it together.
 

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