Louise's Road To Recovery: The END

Woo! So, Louise had an appointment with Dr. Powers yesterday. It was originally on Thursday, but my work schedule changed so we had to move it around a bit.

Anyway, Dr. Powers took a look and said she looks awesome! She was running around the exam table, getting into things, and generally being a credit to her species as far as mischief goes. It's an excellent sign!

As you can see, she still has head tilt. It's quite likely that that's permanent, as it got better and is staying at this level and has been for the past week or so. The doctor did not seem worried and is very pleased with her recovery. The only thing is she wants me to give her her ear drops for another week or so because she still has a teensy bit of inflammation. Will do!

I would like to thank everyone for all of their support through this. It has really meant a lot to me. In a world where, sadly, many people would think that an animal's life and happiness is not awfully important it's been wonderful to have the support and positive thoughts for Louise. She may be a teeny, tiny animal that I purchased for $12, but in that purchase I took her life, health, and happiness as my responsibility and I take that very seriously. Her recovery has been worth every penny I have spent on it and I know that she thinks so, too!

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.

Week of Crazy

Well, I have gone through some pretty terrible stress in the past week. With everything going on, I just don't know where my head is these days.

Friday
I'm pretty sure Friday had a lot going on, but really all I can remember is one thing: Mini Book Club. A few of the ladies from my knitting group got together at our last potluck and decided to start a mini book club that will meet here and there to discuss a book we've been reading. The really big reason I'm mentioning this is that it's a very good book. I've never really been one to read books in the adolescent fiction genre, but honestly I didn't think that this matched up with my original concept of "adolescent fiction". I seem to mentally equate the term with Twilight, which I know is erroneous, but the author actually uses some great vocabulary and doesn't have me wanting to gouge my eyes out with a spoon with inanity of writing. The book is Sabriel by Garth Nix. We were supposed to read the first five chapters for our meeting and I sort of inadvertently read the entire book. I know! I'm bad! It was a great book, though. Check it out.

Another book I'm reading is The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin. That is the third in a trilogy a good friend suggested to me a while back and I waited forever for this book to come out. It is amazing, though. Just absolutley amazing. I really enjoy the writing and the Universe is very unique and unlike anything I've ever really read before.  If you're interested, read the trilogy. They are phenomenal.

Saturday

I weighed in and met my 10% goal. Huzzah! I have an awful lot of pride for that and am looking forward to doing well in the future! I got my 10% medallion but it broke on my keychain because I wouldn't stop fiddling with it. I'm hoping to talk to my leader on Saturday to see if I can't get a new one. But... yay! 10%! That, according to my mother, is 97 sticks of butter. I think I'm going to have to start putting my weight loss in terms of sticks of butter. It's just amusing.

Then, I went up to Austin for our Disablot. It was a lot of fun and I was very happy to see everyone. It has been too long. The kids were very entertaining and I endjoyed seeing them. We were asked to bring an item that we felt represents someone we believe is one of our disir.  I brought my great-great grandmother's practice violin.  According to my great-grandmother, Beatrice the Younger or "Bebe" (and this may be shaky, as she suffered dementia near the end), this violin is the one that Beatrice the Elder played when she met her husband, Frank.  Sort of an interesting story and rather weird to hold that same violin in my hands, many years later.  Anyway, the violin was given to me when I was starting to play in the orchestra in middle school.  It has since been reduced to storage state, with strings loosened or taken off altogether.  It is in need of a new chin rest since the fastener for the original finally gave up the gost a few years ago, at which point my parents decided to retire it and get me a new violin.  I have since stopped playing, but I would really enjoy getting back into it again.  Music is something that has literally created my family, in many ways, and I have many fond memories of my great-grandmother Bebe and music, as it was one of her many creative passions. Anyway, I thought that this particular instrument was a rather huge piece of my family history and I am sure my cohorts are well aware of how much regard I have for my great-grandmother, maybe it was time to go back a teensy bit further and go into that bit of family history.  Family history is certainly not something I am lacking, per se. The rest of the gathering was wonderful and Jenn made a fantastic stew. Very tasty stuff, I must admit.

I ended up staying overnight due to the just... blahness... of not wanting to drive all the way home afterward. I mean, really, who can blame me?  Fun people, great atmosphere, interesting discussion as opposed to two hours of driving home? Decision made fairly easily. I must say, also, that they have some crazy comfortable recliners. Really. Anyway, it was good that I stayed because this meant I could partake in the interesting late-evening activities. The night involved mead and a lot of interesting discussion about runes. I have never been particularly interested in the runes for divinatory purposes, though, so I did not have much to say on the subject.  However, the meanings behind them are very fascinating and I was very interested to learn more about them. More reading is in order, of course, but I'm quick to point out that that seems to be the case for all of my knowledge about Heathenry, and I'm hoping that there will never be a point at which I say otherwise.

Sunday
Well, a good part about Sunday is... that I woke up. That was very good. The recliner was good to sleep in and rather comfortable, so there was no problem with that. We had pancakes for breakfast and it was really great to just sit and have breakfast with my peeps, you know? Yep. We had a bit of amusement trying to rouse some of the folks who stayed up a bit later than we did. I would say we were only marginally more wise, but the margins are very slim on that one. Anyway, it was soon time to go home. I was not excited about the trip, but it wasn't so horrible.

The interesting times really began when I got home. My sister and her fiance were leaving to go horseback riding and my little brother was rather upset about the entire thing. So, I talked to him and we decided to go bowling with my friend, Chris. It was good and we had tons of fun. I even won the first game. Can you believe it? If you've ever been bowling with me, the answer to that should be a resounding "no". Anyway, it did happen. I swear it. Dax got very upset at the end because he didn't win. He gets very upset and down on himself. It just has a lot to do with all of the things that have been going on lately. Anyway, we did go home later and he calmed down quite a bit. It was pretty fun, all in all.

However, right before I was going to go to bed... my mom's dog decided to pick a fight with our new porch cat, named Sage. I have the feeling that she's some sort of Maine Coon mix because she is just absolutely ginormous. Here is a picture for reference:

Anyway, the stupid dog got a scratch on his eyeball so my sister and I went to take him to the vet. He was fine, but there were hours of waiting just to see him have a cone put on his head and given eyedrops. However, the wait was very amusing! There were some interesting signs in the examination room. I have an example.

I have no idea if it was the exhaustion or what, but for some reason this was absolutely amusing. Anyway, we had quite a bit of complaining to do before we had someone finally see the dog and we got his silly cone put on at about 1:45 am. Ugh.



Monday

Nothing happened. I was sick. I did do an awesome marathon of Bones, though.

Tuesday

Well, I was miraculously better that morning but decided to stay home, anyway. I have quite a bit of interesting fun times when I am sick and don't realize it, so I decided to stay home. I'm glad that I did, because my dad very crankily went off to the emergency room complaining of a stomach ache and lo and behold! Appendicitis. My sister caused mild panic when she translated this as a ruptured appendix, but he did have surgery and everything is fine. He came home yesterday and is doing very well. I just hope he doesn't decide to go running around all willy-nilly while he's home on "vacation". Bah.

I have a lot going on in the next few days and, because this week has been a week from hell itself, I have not been very good about exercising. Ugh. I'm going to have to work a bit harder at it next week, but I'm trying to do well. Really. We'll see how it goes. The Internet connection at the house has been fixed, so I am going to hopefully be able to update as things happen. Hopefully.