Louise's Road To Recovery Part 3

This marks a week of treatment and I think things are going really, really well! Louise is finally feeling up to running around on the couch a bit. I did not get too terribly much video, but there is a tiny bit!

You can see here exactly how serious her head tilt is, as she so kindly graced the camera with her presence before shuffling off to burrow amid the couch cushions. It's really significantly better than it was. She used to look... scary. She is doing really great! She crawled around for a little while and everything seems somewhat back to normal. She was still not exactly easy with the medication. I'm at the point of hoping she is swallowing whatever manages to get in her mouth. I'll have to see if I can find any suggestions for a better delivery system or something. She is still her snuggly self and did quite a bit of crawling about in my hair.

I don't look really awesome and great, but she was rummaging around in my hair and snuggling against my neck, as always. :)

Louise's Road To Recovery Part 2

Well, I'm going to keep this short and sweet as it's way past my bedtime, anyway. Louise has been doing much better the past few days and tomorrow marks a week since I noticed her condition.

Today, I went to get her for medicine time and found her hanging out on the third floor of their cage with the others! I had noticed she was making attempts to climb yesterday and was very happy to see this. My second thought was fear she was afraid to get down somehow, but she didn't seem worried about it. I am very encouraged.

(she's the one in the back, there)

Medicine is getting more difficult for her, though. She is learning to wiggle faster than I'm learning to wield the syringe, it seems. I've resorted to seeing an opening and shooting off the syringe and hoping for the best. We will see how she does tomorrow. I can always mix it in with applesauce or something if she is getting too wiggly.

Louise's Road To Recovery, Part I

Well, today went a lot better. I checked on her before I went to work, tried giving her some water in the syringe as I have been doing periodically to ensure she is getting fluids without having to struggle up to the water bottle. I checked her skin for signs of dehydration and she has none, so that is hopeful. After work, I came home and gave her her medicine and some snacks to make sure she is getting some food before the other three go and stash it. She is doing a lot better. She is much more energetic, interested in food, and if I'm not mistaken... I think her head tilt is slightly better than it was Tuesday. It could just be that she is feeling more perky now that she is getting medicine and has more energy to lift up or something, but even my mom and sister remarked that it looks better.

With her having more energy, I had a bit more trouble giving her her medicine today. Fun stuff, right? She took it pretty well, honestly my bigger beasts are significantly worse about it and they don't have anywhere near the same capacity for wiggling as she does. I'm glad I had to fight her, though, it means she's got more strength and alertness!

  

These are the pictures from this afternoon. Compare them to the one I took last night of her snuggled up in my shirt as I gave her little snacks and watched Battlestar Galactica.

 

I see a huge improvement in general appearance, absolutely. She is a lot more alert and looks less sickly. A lot of people might be concerned about the amount of time I'm indicating that she is lazing about on my lap or in my shirt or nuzzled up against my neck. Nah. She has always been interested in snuggling up and is my rat for things like reading or sitting and watching tv or knitting. Perfectly content to be pretty still and enjoy random little snacks and petting of the ears. The others will go run off and create mazes among the couch cushions or glomp my mom's chihuahua, but Louise has always been a mama's girl.

Anyway, things seem like they are looking up and I am glad. Even when I put her back in the cage, she seemed to be getting around much better so I'm nowhere near as worried about her ability to access food and water as I was. Now I am going to go to bed, because I am completely exhausted and have an awesome Thursday planned. :)

Louise

Well, yesterday I made a pretty horrific discovery. I went to go feed the rats and noticed that Louise was having some weird thing going on with her head. I picked her up and it was like she was unable to lift one side of her face from the floor or from that orientation. She looks like the rat in this video:

So, I did a bit of research and found out that this condition is called head tilt and indicates a problem with the inner ear and balance. This can be caused by ear infections, strokes, and pituitary tumors. So, I stayed up watching her until about 3 am and she does not seem to be having any problems getting to her water or food, though I did take her out of the cage and give her a bit of water out of a spoon and she seemed willing to take it, though not particularly thirsty. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

So, I woke up at 7 am and called our vet at Ten West Bird and Animal Hospital. I had never taken any of the rats up there, as they have never had any health problems, but Dr. Powers helped us a lot when we had ferrets when I was little. Anyway, the only appointment I could get that did not interfere with work was at 5:30 pm. Kind of a long wait, but I went for it and went back to bed, completely exhausted. As luck would have it, work was cancelled today so I called them back and made an appointment for 4:30 pm instead. She was really less than enthused about the being in the car part and preferred to lay around in the scary carrying bag and wait for the awfulness to be over:

When I got there, they weighed her and she is about 13.5 oz, kind of on the smaller side for her age. She has lost a bit of weight with all of the health issues, I think, because she did feel a bit smaller. They checked her out and Dr. Powers was very helpful and gentle. I went in there completely sure that they would want to euthanize her. Her head tilt is pretty bad and it happened very quickly, which to me indicates something horrible. I am a horrible worrywort, though. Dr. Powers said that she saw no definitive signs pointing to an ear infection, nothing in her ears at all. However, an ear infection would be the most treatable condition at this point, so we decided to treat it as that and see if it helped at all. So, she gave me several medications for her to take for two weeks and then come in for a follow up.


Mometamax - ear drops to help with a possible ear infection

Baytril - antibiotic taken by mouth, seems to be commonly prescribed

Metacam - for pain and inflammation, hopefully to help with the inflammation in her inner ear and help with the head tilt, plus this cannot be too fun so pain relief is good, too. She did not want to give her a steroid, so she opted for this instead to see if it would work.

Artificial Tear Ointment - for her right eye, which is facing much at a downward angle and the tears are to help keep it from getting injured, to be given 3 times daily

Amazingly enough, this whole thing only cost me like $150. It isn't cheap, but it was a lot better than I was afraid it would be. 

She took her medicine like a champ and did not fuss or try to bite or anything, so that's good. I don't know if that should worry me further as it seems to indicate she is feeling absolutely awful. Anyway, she more than earned her little mini-snack of apple sauce as a reward for her bravery.

Here's to hoping that she perks up and does better. She has always been my favorite of the four, though I try not to say it too loudly for the other three to hear. She has always been sort of socially awkward and very clingy and shy. Heck, for the first month or two after I brought her home she shirt dived and refused to leave the comforting confines of my bra during play time. She has really gotten much better, but she is still shy and awkward. I think it's all of the extra work and effort I have had to put in to seeing her grow into a well-socialized little beast that makes me love her so. Plus, she gives awesome rattie kisses! Right now she is resting comfortably in the cage. I went ahead and cleaned it up very well and made a few furniture modifications to allow her to get around a bit better, so we will see how she does. I am hopeful that she will return to her adorable self again soon.