did i miss something? whats up with rucy?

Rucy was sick a few weeks ago… https://binkybunny.com/Default.aspx?tabid=54&forumid=6&postid=57122&view=topic

yes… update ;o)

Thanks Sarita for asking. She has been feeling better each week. Especially this last week, she’s been playing more (even mini-binkied) out in the living room, and she gets much less winded. She’s not yet doing her midnight zooms through the house, but hopefully next month. I have been told that pneumonia take a long time to recover from. (if that is in fact what it is)

Unfortunately, when she had follow-up xrays last week, the strange shading in her chest area was still there. She had her follow up with my regular rabbit savvy vet and she said the shading could be a sign of a number of different things (a collapsed lung from the pneumonia, an abcess, but usually abcesses show up a bit differently, so she is deferring to the radiologist who comes in by the end of the week. So I will have an update soon.

I have been trying to keep my mind off of it because if it IS an abcess – in THAT location and it’s not decreasing, and only the meds are keeping a secondary infection due to the abscess at bay…then….that’s not good, not…good at all     SO…..I’m back to not thinking about it.   Rucy seems happy, full appetite, pooping normally….oh…and less sneezing…so I’m just thinking positive.

Again, thanks so much for thinking of her and I’ll keep you updated.

aw poor rucy, sorry i dont always get time to check the other forums so i just kinda pop in here, anyway i am so sorry to hear rucy hasnt been feeling well i was watching the webcams the other day and u had just given them down a ball of something, they were sure enjoying it anyway it was soooo cute i nearly fell off my chair hehe i am glad it seems to be getting better, do keep us posted ****vibes****

kimberlyanddarren, thank you.

Oh, you got to see them with their treat ball thing. That’s fun to watch. Rucy has learned to let Jack do most of the work while she grabs all the falling yummies (usually just pellets, willow foliage, herbs and hay with a papaya tabet or two) but every once in awhile she’ll get impatient and toss it around. But when she flings it it goes flying and they usually lose it. Recently she flung it so high it landed on top of the maze. So that shows she’s at least got her spunk back!

I had a peek on the webcam the other evening and Rucy was so close she looked like she was peeking back! I watched in the hope that she’d get up to her old camera sabotage tricks, but she left to play with Jack.

So cute though – last week she was stretched out next to that triangle tunnel thing you have, and Jack came up behind her, then flopped himself next to her wedged between her and the tunnel. It didn’t look like there was any space for him at all, but there he squeezed.

Rabbitpam – Oh, cutie cute cute stuff you saw. I love hearing about what people see. Jack always loves to be next to her.
We’ve got the camera that is at their “sabotage” level drilled down, but the other day I knocked down one of the cameras with the shopvac, and it pointed up, so I was forced to wave at the camera before I could fix it. Of course who likes to be on camera with your hair in a scrunchy, no make-up,but it’s going to be bound to happen…over and over. So, we just have to live with it. My husband, however, now always makes sure to close the door to hallway in the morning, so he never is in the caught again in all of his glory. (he said it never bothered him much, but he never forgets to close that door when necessary.

Back to subject of Rucy. The vet and I have been playing phone tag, but I now have my phone glued to me. She will probably call about 7pm, so I am anxious to find out what she has to say.

You have my prayers for dear Rucy. I hope everything turns out okay. (hugs)

Okay, talked to my vet at length today.  Good news is that she does NOT have an abscess in her chest.  That would have been bad….very bad.

However, my vet and the radiologist feel that it is not pneumonia either, but a hernia!    She said this can happen from an accidental Bunny Bunt, a jump or fall from someplace high, or a congenital defect  and if it is that it could have been there from birth, or she just had a weak diapham, and as she aged, this happened. .

Now here’s the catch, she is sneezing and seems to have an infection and responded quickly to treatment, so that does confirm some infection was going on, and so the vet said that they could have just found this defect as a incidental thing because we did the xrays. 

But Rucy is prone to getting up very high!  She’s like some watcher meerkat, because she will jump on the couch, and then she’ll try and get up to to the back of the couch, or onto the arms.  Those are always too high and not the most stable place to walk.  I usually get her off.

And we are very careful about “shuffling” around when it gets darker so no accidental bunny bunts happen, but I do vaguely remember a few months back, Steve yelled from the other side of the house that he accidentally kicked a bunny when he was coming out of the bathroom….but that they were fine.  It could have been Rucy.  Steve can’t remember either.     I asked my vet if that could have done it, and if it was hard enough or their was already a weakened diaphram (from some genetic thing) then yes that could have happened. I asked then why did iher “emergency symptoms” happen months later.    And the vet said that at the time it may not have caused a serious problem, but as time went on and she did other things like jump or ??? it could have just worsened it.

So really, WHO KNOWS!   She is a daredevil highjumper risk-taker so she could have jumped/fallen off the back of the couch when i wasn’t looking, OR she could have been a victim of accidental “Bunny Bunting” OR it could all be genetics, -  always been there (we just never needed to have chest x-rays done until the respitory infection). 

So  for now, we are going to continue treating her for the infection she seems to have, and and keep an eye on her. 

There is a surgery to repair this but they usually only peform them when it is acute (like when an animal is hit by car) and the hernia is causing a fatal situation because it is a very painful surgery with a long painful healing time – very very hard on Rucy.  Not recommended for Rucy right now.

The vet said many animals live fine with hernias and though Rucy may have some limited lung compacity, she is getting used to it, and even did binkies last night.  Don’t know if she’ll ever have the “breath” for her crazy zooms up and down the hallway,   but she seems happy.

She will have x-rays though again in a month just so we can keep track of it.

I also have to keep an eye on how much she sneezes and if she continues sneezing after her meds are over, and or gets worse, then we’ll have to find out if the hernia is keeping her in that state.  

So far now, that’s the update.  

I have mixed feelings about it all   I am VERY VERY happy it’s not an abcess in her chest.   That would have been much worse.  But not knowing exactly how this hernia happened makes me think and rethink, and rethink.  

Just happy Rucy is feeling okay and life seems to fine for her.

Oh BB I’m SO glad it’s not the abcess! *whew!*
I know it’s hard not to think, “If I had only just…” But try not to beat yourself up about it. What’s done is done and hopefully it won’t burden your dear bun any further than it has.

Sometimes God puts things in our way to keep us from doing things that would be even more injurious to ourselves than how we are now. We’ve had to think that way about my husband’s many ailments, as he was quite the firecracker when he was younger. (Have you ever heard of someone rolling their vehicle off the tiered ledges in the University’s parking lot? Yah…well…that’s him!)

Maybe this hernia is there to calm Rucy down a bit…so she doesn’t do a major header off the couch or something. It certainly will have you watching her more closely, so she’s not going to get the opportunity.

At any rate, I will keep my prayers going that this will not reduce her quality of life and that she’s back to her spunky old self, or as close to it as possible, very soon!

If it’s anything like human hernias, it’s probably not any “one” thing that caused it. I think it’s more of a weakness, like a thin spot or a tiny hole in a bag, that gets larger and more evident with time. So it’s probably All of the Above and nothing you or Steve did specifically. I wouldn’t dwell on it. (Last year my Dad had surgery to repair his hernia. It was operated on 40 years before so it needed a new repair, if that helps to know.)

You know that with age comes, well, laziness. I stopped seeing many bunny 500s when Spockie was a full grown adult. He just didn’t feel like it as much. So she may mellow out anyway and go by that old joke:

Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.”
Dr.: “Don’t do that.”