before everyone starts freaking out, he is fine now. vet said it is due in part since I brought him in so quickly.
yesterday around 8 pm I gave the bunnies their lettuce, on schedule. rorschach wouldn’t come out from behind the curtain to eat, so I even brought the bowl over and he just sniffed it and looked away. Usually he goes crazy for his lettuce, but I figured maybe he just wasn’t hungry. later, I noticed he was lying inside his cage, which he never does [the bunnies have their own area fenced off]. I tried to offer him a carrot, which he wouldn’t take either. I then put a bowl of water in front of him, and some hay, and he woudn’t touch any of it. I got him to come out of the cage, but he was just lying around and breathing kind of hard. right away I knew something was up, so I called around for an emergency vet that was open 24 hours and found one in Dublin [about a 25 minute drive from my place]. I packed rorschach up right away and brought him over.
the doc took his temp and weight, and felt him and noticed his body temperature was a bit low and his stomach felt very flaccid. he felt the lymphnodes and concluded it wasn’t a respiratory infection, but most likely his bowels weren’t having much movement. he took an xray and pointed out that the bowels seemed pretty backed up, but the colon tract was empty. the stomach felt flaccid because there was a good amount of fluid in there, and it wasn’t being absorbed by his body since the bowels weren’t really working. he injected some fluid under the skin and gave rorschach some pain medication because his tummy issues were probably making him quite uncomfortable. he advised to take rorschach home, hold off water [because the stomach is already full], and instead try to get him to eat some hay to get his system moving again. after about thirty minutes rorschach started eating hay and moving around again, and this morning I noticed some poops!
so I’m going to take him to his regular vet in a little bit to get a follow up and make sure things are alright. also, I was given some critical care feed to administer to rorschach. I’m supposed to mix the powder with water so it’s kind of liquidy, then put about 10 cc in a syringe and give it to him. do you have any tips on how to get this to the bun, because rorschach is just NOT having any of this nonsense haha.
sigh, so I am totally sleep deprived because I’ve been keeping an eye on him all night. but I am so relieved he’s looking better. lesson learned, always find an emergency vet in the area! the sooner you take them in, the quicker the recovery. phew.