Did my bunny die from hypothermia?

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This topic has 5sd replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 3 months ago by Maev .

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- 01/29/2018 at 11:48 AM
  Maev
  Participant
  2 posts
  My sweet baby boy passed away on December 31st. Of course, being both a major holiday and a Sunday made it so that there were no vet offices open near me, and the closest emergency vet was an hour away. Looking back, I should have just taken him there much sooner, but he had went through bouts of stasis before and was always pretty quick to recover, and he had also been getting fluids for 2 or 3 days. However, that day he was spitting out his Critical Care when I tried syringe feeding him, and I noticed his ears were very cold and he kind of just felt cold all over. I wrapped him in a blanket with a warm heating pad and after a little bit he seemed to perk up. I left the room for a moment and when I came back he was sitting in his litter box, and he would slowly put his head down like he was falling asleep, but then jerk his head back up like he was fighting to stay awake. His ears were now really pale, the rings around his eyes were pale, and there was some discharge coming from them. I wrapped him up in a towel and rushed him as fast as I could to the emergency vet, and he was fighting for his life through the whole ride there, but right when I walked through the vet’s doors he started seizing in my arms and his heart stopped. I had him for 6 years, he was my world, my baby, and I was and still am so devastated. I will have to live with all of the “what if’s” and the guilt I feel for not taking him to the vet sooner for the rest of my life. I can’t stop thinking about how he could still be here if I would have just done this and that. Can’t stop blaming myself. He depended on me to make him feel better and I failed him. I keep apologizing to him in hopes he can hear me. I miss him.
  
  I’m sorry this seems like it belongs in the Rainbow Bridge section, maybe it does, but I do have questions. Based on what I wrote, does this sound like hypothermia? Or could it have been kidney failure? Or the stasis, or was it maybe just his time to go? I rescued him after he was dumped outside so his exact age was not known, but he was maybe 7 or 8 years old, which makes me believe it wasn’t old age, although he was slowing down a bit a week or two leading up to the stasis. He lost his appetite for hay in that time, but he still had a big appetite for critical care, salads, and pellets, and was pooping normally. I got his teeth filed just a few days before he went into stasis because my vet thought it might have been his spurs causing him to not eat his hay, which is another thing I regret doing because it just made him lose his appetite altogether.
  
  I normally would have considered myself to be fairly knowledgeable in bunny care, except I didn’t even know there was a larger possibility of bunnies getting hypothermia while they have stasis. This is why I was so caught off guard when it happened, I had no idea what was wrong or what to do for him, I just knew it was really bad. This is such a huge jumble of words, I’m sorry, my thoughts are everywhere. I just want to know where I went wrong, what I should have done, what I could have done, so that maybe I can prevent this from happening in the future, or at least know what to do when it happens. If a bunny experiences hypothermia, is warming them back up enough? Is there something else they need? Obviously getting them to the vet as soon as possible is ideal, but in this case “as soon as possible” wasn’t soon enough because it was so far away. I feel like I could have spent the time it took to drive there to do something for him at home instead.
  
  I would really appreciate any help, insight, advice, anything. Nobody I know understands what it’s like to love a bunny. He was my child and I was not ready to lose him. He was so special to me, being my first bun. I probably would have never had bunnies in my life if he wouldn’t have showed up out of the blue. I’ve learned so much from him. I just wish it hadn’t of cost him his life for me to learn about hypothermia… if that’s really what took him. I don’t think I will ever be able to celebrate NYE again.
  
  Thank you for reading.
- 01/29/2018 at 2:36 PM
  Mikey
  Participant
  3186 posts
  Sorry for your loss
  
  Sadly, we cant really tell you how or why he died. Youd need to have your vet run some tests if you want to know exactly how and why it happened.
  
  But, yes, rabbits can die from being way too cold. Their body temps can drop when their sick, too, especially if theyre not eating. When was the last time he ate before all of this? What was his temperature? What was the temperature in the room he was placed in?
- 01/29/2018 at 3:14 PM
  Deleted User
  Participant
  22064 posts
  So sorry you lost your dear friend.
  
  As Mikey stated, we can only speculate because there could have been any number of reasons for his passing. To me, it sounds like a combination of factors contributed here. Stasis and hypothermia are the obvious explanations. It’s likely that the stasis led to hypothermia as food is a source of energy that keeps us in homeostatic balance. I’m no physician by any means, so I’m not telling you this is what happened. But speaking from speculation, associating the stasis with the hypothermia that followed makes sense to me.
  
  In the future, a good way to warm up a cold bunny is to get some water bottles filled with warm water and wrap them in a cloth and place them around the bunny. Rabbits normal temperature is 101-103 (I believe) so if the ears are noticeably cold then it’s probably time to start some warming. Hypothermia occurs in humans if body temperature falls below 95 F, so it’s really only a matter of a few degrees that makes a huge difference.
- 01/29/2018 at 3:51 PM
  Anna
  Participant
  35 posts
  This must have been such a horrible experience, I’m so sorry. I lost my first two bunnies way too early, and blamed myself, so I can imagine how you’re feeling. But it sounds like he had a helluva lot of love while he was with you.
- 01/29/2018 at 4:16 PM
  Bam
  Moderator
  16998 posts
  I’m very sorry you lost your bunny.
  
  Please don’t accuse yourself. We do that when we’ve haven’t been able to help those in our care – it feels like we’ve failed them. That’s normal and a part of the grieving process. It doesn’t mean that you actually did fail him though. Some buns get really old, but many die young and 7-8 years is not at all young for a bunny. He was so lucky to get to have you for 6 whole years.
  
  Buns can get hypothermic when they’re in stasis, so we always recommend you warm a stasis bun up a bit, for example by sitting the bun in your knee so it gets warmed up by your body. A vet can give warmed-up fluids. But there are times when that won’t help, Poorly buns tend to get hypothermic. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the hypothermia that kills – plus you did warm him up when you noticed he was cold. Discharge from the eyes is not consistent with either hypothermia or stasis. It makes me think there was something else going on.
  
  There are so many things that can cause a bunny to die unexpectedly, and even necropsies are often inconclusive. Stasis is rather a symptom than a disease of it’s own.
  
  So many people have no idea what a special and great friend a bun can be. We who have and have had the privilege to love and be loved by a rabbit are very lucky. But like all good things, love comes at a price, and loss of a loved one is extremely painful. Try to not make it worse by accusing yourself, because the truth is you can’t know what took him.
  
  I hope one day another bunny will find you. You seem like a really great bun parent.
- 01/29/2018 at 8:46 PM
  Maev
  Participant
  2 posts
  Mikey – I had syringe-fed him warm critical care just a few hours before that. He got a good amount into him. And even a few hours before that, he was eating the CC on his own. Everything went downhill so fast. I didn’t take his temperature as I was just concerned about getting him warmed up and I didn’t want to stress him out further by sticking something in his bum. It was maybe in the low 70’s in the room at the time. I wish I had gotten a necropsy done, but it didn’t even cross my mind because I was in so much shock from what had just happened.
  
  BunNoob – Thank you. Would warm water bottles be enough to raise their temperature back up to a normal level? Can we save them from hypothermia on our own?
  
  Anna – It was the worst day of my life and I might honestly be a little traumatized by it. When I see pictures of sleeping bunnies now, all I can see is my boy laying dead in my arms at the vet’s office. I’m sure I ruined some peoples’ day with my hysterical crying there, that’s for sure. I’m sorry about your two buns. Losing a fur baby to old age is one thing, but it’s a whole other thing to lose them from something that you feel like you could have fixed. Although I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, I do find some comfort in knowing that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
  
  Bam – Thank you so much. I wish I had known about making it a point to keep them extra warm when they’re in stasis, and I don’t even know if I kept him warm enough since he hopped out of the blanket when I stepped out of the room. So he might have warmed up a bit but then got too cold again. The discharge from his eyes only started the last hour or two of his life, so could it maybe have been caused by his body shutting down? It sucks so bad knowing that I will never know for sure what took him, or if I really could have helped him or not.
  
  I actually do have another bunny with me. I rescued her from a parking lot over a year ago where she was skin and bones, covered in fleas, and a day or two away from dying. She was not bonded with my boy, but they did like to occasionally lay side-by-side through the bars of their “cage” (made from those storage blocks that you connect together). She always groomed him but he would never groom her back and it frustrated her a lot, ha. It scares me to have another bunny though… I couldn’t bear something like this happening again. And she does seem to be a bit lonely and sad since his passing, despite them not being bonded.
  
  I really appreciate all of the help and kind words. This is such a great community that I should have joined sooner, though I was always going to binkybunny first whenever I googled questions. There are also so many things I wish I would have done… keeping him warm, getting to the vet sooner, getting bloodwork done when I had taken him the previous week, not getting his teeth filed, etc…. It makes it so hard not to blame myself. I can’t even look at bananas now because they were his favorite. I would sit down with one, open the peel, and see how long it took for him to smell it. He usually sniffed it out in seconds. When I was too slow to give him a piece he would stomp his foot at me until I did. Sometimes when I laid on the floor he would start running in my direction but then do a 180 right before he got to me and run back into his cottontail cottage. It’s like I could hear him laughing and saying “sike!!” as he did it. Such a huge personality in a tiny little body. I still expect to see him in my room whenever I come home and have him run up to me to see if I brought him anything yummy to eat. All I can do is hope that there is some sort of afterlife and that I will see him again some day.
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