Bunny Drama
After over two years of no bunny health issues whatsoever (unless you count Brinco's...unfortunate wound and his minor eye infection), we had a sudden explosion of bunny sickness in our house this fall. Not only our bunnies, but the fosters as well. And all of them were unrelated and within a month of each other. It was spooky. I think we must have built our house over an ancient bunny burial ground or something.The first issue happened with Paris, one of a trio of foster bunnies at our house. Her inappropriate peeing was so incessant that we had to move the foster area into the bathroom with the tile floor. The light-colored tile allowed us to see that Paris had blood in her pee, and it turned out she had a massive bladder stone the size of her bladder.
Right after she got that removed (a week later), another member of the trio, Sandy, came down with a severe case of head tilt. We ended up taking the trio to the medical foster home, and it turns out that was the right decision, since Sandy's recovery took a lot more expertise than I currently have. His inner ear infection is finally cleared up, but poor Sandy has a 90-degree head tilt. His foster owners are currently working on straightening him out with different kinds of therapy. We're hoping he can make a full recovery.
Within a week or so of that incident, I noticed that Brinco had a horribly inflamed ear. When I took him and Cinnamon into the vet, it turned out that both of them had ear infections -- Brinco in one ear and Cinnamon in both ears. However, Cinnamon's ears were less infected, even though she is a lop. This is not very common, apparently.
They were given topical antibiotics, and after they finished those, they went in for another checkup and got a clean bill of health. However, Cinnamon was snortier than usual and Brinco had started peeing outside the litterbox. I took them to another vet for a second opinion, and it turns out that Cinnamon still had an ear infection that had spread to her respiratory system (since she hadn't been given any oral antibiotics). Brinco, while infection-free, still had some nasty looking inflammation in his ear, which was probably why he was acting out of sorts.
So Cinnamon got oral antibiotics and Brinco got some pain meds. When those were finished, it was time for another follow-up. Now Cinnamon was totally cleared up, but Brinco had ear mites. The vet hypothesized that ear mites may have been the root cause from the beginning. Luckily, ear mites only require a couple of shots, given two weeks apart.
Nearly two weeks after Brinco (and Cinnamon, for good measure) got the shots, Brinco stopped eating almost completely. And any bunny owner knows that that's not a good sign. He stopped eating Monday night and he was due for his next shot on Wednesday morning, so I just watched to make sure he ate at least a little bit for the next day and a half.
Wednesday was my birthday, December 20th, and this was two months after I first noticed that Brinco's ear looked bad. The vet thought that Brinco's GI stasis was a reaction to the pain of the ear mites, since the first shot hadn't quite done the job. While at the vet's office, Brinco got the whole treatment -- huge syringe full of subcutaneous fluids, several syringe feedings of Critical Care, shots of Reglan and the ear mite stuff, and some pain meds. We had to cancel our out of town Christmas plans to stay home with our sick bunny.
The good news is that Brinco did really well on his treatment. We had to syringe feed him a whole host of crap every day for a while, but he didn't have any relapses, and he started eating normally again after several days. At the beginning of January, he and Cinnamon got their first clean bill of health from the new vet. Success!
It's now a month later, and they're still very happy and healthy. Cinnamon has been a very active rabbit who likes to come out and hop all over the place upstairs -- not to mention she's still a major petting whore and a flopper. Brinco is also a big flopper, but he regularly lets loose with joyful binky runs all around his room. They are much happier than they've been in a long time.
I'm still not sure what caused all their problems, but here's hoping they'll stay healthy for a long time!
