Ratablog

Virus infection

Witter is sick--again. If you've read his history, you know he's had problems with parasites (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Now, he's got the URI (Upper Respiratory Infection) that won't go away.

He had a URI in November, and a round of Baytril seemed to clear that up.

In mid-December, Abita noticed he was making "monkey sounds" at times, but I never heard them. He would grunt every now and then, usually when he was excited, so I wasn't that worried.

One day, the sounds got worse, and he went to back to Dr. K. Another round of Baytril later, and he was still making the sounds. Another round of Baytril...and he was still having problems. Dr. K. took some blood for a test, and we continued with the Baytril. On the plus side, his lungs sounded clear, so we felt he probably didn't have pneumonia.

We feared the results of his blood test might be skewed somewhat because he had been on Baytril for two weeks, and they might well have been. They did show he was slightly anemic, but nothing else that was cause for major alarm.

Dr. K. also consulted with another vet at the lab, and they feel he may have had an undiagnosed viral infection for quite awhile, and a bacterial infection took advantage of his suppresed immune system and settled in.

We'll be treating him for the rest of his life, probably. The thing is, is that if it weren't for the occasional grunt from him, you wouldn't know he had a problem.

In the meantime, his bedding gets changed every day. Rat pee-pee breaks down into ammonia, so by eliminating that possibility, we're helping to keep his bronchial passages not-irritated. To make that easier, he's no longer bedded on Yesterday's News. I've started putting a fleece baby blanket in the bottom of his cage, and a flannel receiving blanket to nest in.

He's getting vitamins every evening to help with the anemia, and his diet is changed slightly. We still give him Mazuri lab blocks (which he gnaws into the most *interesting* shapes) and Nutro Natural Choice Lite, but that's now being supplemented with fresh vegetables and fruit (mostly grapes and blueberries for now). He's also getting some spinach leaves to help further with the anemia.

He's also continuing with antibiotics, but this time it's Doxycycline, which he gets mixed in piña colada mix (high calorie, but it's the proverbial spoonful of sugar helping his nasty tasting medicine go down).

None of that is really new to us. What is new, however, is the nebulizer treatment.

In order to help loosen up any congestion he might have, and to help open up his bronchial passages, he's basically getting steam treatment. We were fortunate to already have the compressor; getting the tube and medicine cup was just a matter of visiting a surgical supply store. The hard part would be figuring out how to get Witter nebulized.

(In the meantime, he went into a travel cage with a water bottle, and sat next to the shower in the morning. Not as effective, but better than nothing.)

Other rat friends have had to do this, so I turned to them for help. One friend sent us this link from the RMCA (Rat and Mouse Club of America) webpage, which showed the rat being treated by waving the mist under the rat's nose. I didn't feel too confident that would work, because I didn't really see Witter, much less any rat, holding still for ten to fifteen minutes.

Another friend described her setup: She put her rat in a ten-gallon fish tank, taped the mouthpiece to the side, covered the tank with a towel, and turned it on. This one had the benefit of trapping the rat in a relatively small area with the nebulized gas.

Abita was kind enought to pick up the Doxy for me, and that gave her a chance to discuss the fish tank setup with Dr. K, who didn't like it. She explained it would take a lot of time for the tank to fill up, and she felt the large volume would dilute the mist, and therefore the treatment.

Her idea was to cut the end off of a 2-liter bottle, shove Witter into it and cover the cut end with plastic wrap, and pump the mist through the bottle opening.

It turns out the end of the nebulizer fit into the opening perfectly--we wouldn't have to seal it with plastic wrap or anything, which took that potential problem out of the equation

That setup worked--kinda. He didn't fit entirely in the bottle (!), and I held the end against my shirt to help keep the mist concentrated. Witter helped out by keeping his nose right next to the nebulizer exhaust, helping maximize its effectiveness that way. But he wasn't happy--he didn't eat a yogurt drop until he was safely in his cage.

Abita and I thought the problem through, and decided to see if we could find a plastic small animal house that he'd fit in, and then modify the plastic bottle to seal it. The only thing we could find was a chinchilla bath house, so we bought it.

It ws perfect. The cut end of the bottle fit over the opening perfectly, so again, there'd be no need to seal the junction with plastic wrap to ensure a tight seal. All I had to do was trim it down so that it looked like a big funnel, and we'd be good to go:

The hard part was putting Witter into the bath house. It took two people!

Once we got it going, though, Witter cooperated by sticking his nose right next to the exhaust:

He was in it for close to ten minutes tonight, and the reason we cut it short is because I'm still experimenting with the amount of saline to put into the medicine cup. Tomorrow we try 4 cc's.

One thing about the bath house: It seemed to be pretty air-tight (after the opening was sealed, anyway) so I drilled a small hole in the back of the house, near the top. With the compressor pumping out 8 liters or so of air each minute, I had visions of the pressure building up inside the house and blowing the bottle-funnel off the front. I kept my finger over it for the first minute, though, to help the mists get concentrated, then covered it up every now and then.

Posted by Publius at January 5, 2004 09:09 PM