New owner: E Cuniculi issues

[FrankStas]

New to the site, rabbit ownership and looking for some feedback. 

We recently had the privilege of bringing home Caramel. She is ~ 8 months old (sorry I cannot remember her exact age right now). My wife and daughter have really fallen in love with her and she has been a fantastic addition to our little zoo of parrots, dog and fish. Very happy, very playful, eating & drinking well, very affectionate and bounding all over the place. 

Unfortunately, we have had a pretty dramatic past 48 hours.

She stopped eating, drinking, then her left eye swelled, became quite red and eventually shut over the course of an hour. From the immediate trip to our vet yesterday, she was hydrated, received meds for gastro-intestinal issues and the doc took blood to test for E Cuniculi (among other things). Today she was doing much better, he color was back, her energy was back and she was eating/drinking normally. The eye swelling was gone and the eye had re-opened. Late today, my wife went to check on her and found blood streaming from the left eye.

In a panicked trip back to the vet, he confirmed that her EC readings were very high and that the cause of the bleeding was due to a cyst in the eye that had ruptured and that the cause of the cyst was due to the EC. He immediately recommended that the eye be removed due to damage to the eye and due to the very high EC readings. 

I have been doing as much reading as I can tonight and cannot find eye cysts as a symptom of EC. Going straight to the eye removal also seems aggressive but not sure if it is warranted given the cyst and the high readings. Looking for feedback if this is common, should we get a second opinion? The poor thing is miserable so want to take some positive action quick but we are quite scared of making a poor decision and doing something to risk our little fuzzy loved one. 

Only reassuring thing so far is the long list of people who have perfectly happy, healthy one eye rabbits. 

Thanks in advance, 
Frank

[Bam]

I’m sorry you have to go through this. Poor baby Caramel.

E cuniculi can form cysts in the brain, and the eyes and the optic nerve really are parts of the brain and develops as optic vesicles that are outgrowings of the brain. It is more common for e cuniculi to manifest as a cataract though, but we have had bunnies here that has had to have their eye removed due to e cuniculi. Retrosquid is one of those members, their bunny Link had his eye removed.

I don’t have any personal experience with this though. The problem with e cuniculi is that it can affect many organs, most commonly brain, kidneys and heart (organs with a very high blood-supply). So just getting the eye out might not mean the end of this problem. I take it she’s on Panacur now?

[FrankStas]

Thank you for the reply!!

She is on Panacur as of today. The assessment of our vet is that her readings are too high and that the damage to the eye was so severe to the point that trying to repair the eye and treat the EC will likely just end up in two surgeries (one to repair and then ultimatly one to take it out). Hopefully she is young enough that it has not spread to too many other organs, but we shall see. For now, she is in good care.

Will share as things hopefully improve.

Thanks again

[Deleted User]

Sorry to hear you have a poorly bun, I hope she has a speedy recovery.

My boy bun (Red) only has 1 eye, I adopted him like that but it doesn’t effect him in any way so please don’t worry too much about how Caramel will get on if you do lose the eye

[Author]

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