Yesterday was the vet appointment. Unfortunately it was double bad news. The bladder stone looks to have moved into his urethra, and the peritonitis hasn't changed one iota. So the vet gave us two options. Continue on the antibiotics for another week and re-x-ray or exploratory surgery. Right now in his condition exploratory surgery would be a death sentence for him, so we went with the first option. Feather is steadily improving, so we can only hope that the improvement will eventually show on the x-rays. Feather takes his syringe that bit more readily each day and eats more each feeding. He's beginning to pick at solid food again and today ate a whole handful of grass.
The bladder stone is a worry though. Starting from about midday yesterday, he stopped peeing. At best there would be a few drops of pure blood. He was screaming in pain. We'd already been told that if the stone blocked him there was nothing that could be done. The peritonitis made the stone inoperable. So we chugged along and I kept stuffing him with fluid and eyeing off the metacam bottle wondering if an extra dose could hurt him. And praying, a lot of praying. Tonight, 30 hours after he stopped peeing he's back to doing enormous clear streams of pee. He makes a slight grunt at the end, but other then that looks pain free. So I don't know if that means he passed the stone or it's just moved back into his bladder, but at least he's not in pain.
So I've got the routine with Feather down pat now. He has a snugglesafe 24/7 and from 4:30 to about 10:00 PM he hangs out in front of the fireplace with a pile of grass. You've never seen a more contented pig. I feed him from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM, as I still hope that a twelve hour period without syringe feeding will make him hungry enough to eat. So far he's never gone too far backwards. By morning he's usually the prefeeding weight of his last nightly feed. Between 10 am and 10 pm he's fed every two hours. Every day I increase the amount he's fed that little bit more. Right now he's on 45mL per feed. Because hydration is incredibly important with peritonitis I make his critta care very watery. I usually use Cranberry juice to water it down (he hates plain water and he hates plain critta care and he hates baby food, cranberry is the only flavouring he likes). I figure that the Cranberry juice might help soothe his bladder as well, but I mainly use it because it's the only flavour so far that he loves enough to swallow when I stick the syringe in his mouth. I aim for at least 160mL total of this extra watery critta care. The last few days he's actually taken about 200mL. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to help him gain weight. If he's looking exhausted/lethargic he gets 3ml of a glucose solution to perk him up a bit. I've found that when he can't pee he wears himself out straining and the sugar seems to help keep him going till the pain eases. He gets 25mg of metronidazole every morning along with 0.2mL of metacam, and a few hours later if his poos are looking off he'll get a probiotic. His poos are looking perfect at the moment and he loathes the probiotic (probably because it's the only cold thing I give him), so I don't give it if he's looking good.
So I guess we'll keep chugging along and eventually something might change. I can't make him gain weight no matter how hard I try. This morning he was 816g, and I fed him 45g before I left and left him with my mother to feed as I had a uni class I couldn't miss and he fought her the whole time, so by the time I got home he was down to 799g. He's a perfect angel for me, so I think he must have just been testing his luck. He was about 870g tonight after a lot of syringe feeding, but now the floodgates have reopened so to speak I fully except him to pee his way back below 800g by morning.
Anyway I haven't got copies of the most recent x-rays as something went wrong with the CD they gave me, but these are the ones from saturday.... The little white oblong thing is the stone, and the funny swirly white stuff is the peritonitis.
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