[Gpdd] Health: Russell and his Christmas bladder stone

[Lisa Choiniere]

Hi everyone,
   
  Russell-roni, my sister's guinea pig, best buddy to Pippin, gave both my sister and I the fright of our lives this past Christmas weekend. Friday evening, the day before we were to go across the state for an overnight trip he pees blood. I am sure there was urine in there somewhere too, but it looked just like blood. He of course could not have done this on Thursday evening so we could have called the vet! 
   
  There is an emergency clinic here in good ol' Kalamazoo but since most of their best vets have gone elsewhere and our piggy vet has opened his own clinic after leaving there, we felt it would be more detrimental to little Russell-roni to bring him there than for us to do what we knew until Monday.
   
  I have a pretty well stocked pig pharmacy here at the rescue so we started him on antibiotics. I sent Leah an email because I didn't know how we would know if it was a stone or an infection without the X-ray. He wasn't blocked because he was still peeing so we pumped him full of fluids and antibiotics and infant's ibuprofen for pain. We gave him whatever veggies he would eat since his appetite was down. Needless to say, he went with us on our trip across the state.
   
  He passed a few small clots and then a HUGE amount of urine which was pretty clear so we thought maybe he had a small stone and the worst was over. So then we take Russell-roni to the vet this week and he gets an X-ray and lo and behold the size of the stone in his poor bladder! A piece had also broken off an was hanging out at the top of his urethra too. We found this out today. He had perked up and thought all was well, he had just gotten some UTI over the weekend and the antibiotics were helping. Today though he was looking really punky and his poor little wenis was looking kind of odd. So to the vet we went. 
   
  The irony in this is that my cat Rudy went to the vet on Monday for what I thought was a UTI. They took an X-ray of him and he had almost thirty bladder stones! He had surgery yesterday and got to come home to me today. However, none of Rudy's stones were nearly as big as Russell's!
   
  Tomorrow, Russell is having the cystotomy with a possible urethrotomy depending on if this other broken chunk can be flushed away from the urethra or not. It is going to be quite complicated so if you can all please think of our Russell-roni tomorrow while he is undergoing this surgery, we would appreciate it.
   
  I would also love it if anyone who has bladder stone pigs can write to me and tell me what you do for your babies. Out of all the pigs I have had here at my rescue, this has never happened and frankly, I am scared witless. Now I am trying to cram as much info about stones a I can into as little time as possible, not just for Russell, but also for my cat Rudy, which was also very very unexpected.
   
  Thank you,
  Lisa, Russell, and the worried gang at Wheeks and Squeaks
  Murray, Chewie, Mr. Zippy, and Jack in mem

		
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Photos
 Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever.