Hello everyone,

First time posting here. Desperately seeking some help, information, or experiences others have had for my bunny suffering from what we believe is Aspiration Pneumonia. Some background information:

My rabbit, Whimsy, had a choking incident while eating her pellets this past Thursday (10/28/21). She stopped mid eating, and began frantically running around her x-pen, gasping and wheezing with a bunch of mucus coming from her mouth and nose.  I was able to dislodge the stuck food using the bunny Heimlich. However, afterwards I noticed she had calmed down some, but was still having labored breathing. I took her right away to our nearest emergency vet clinic, where x-rays were taken and she was put on oxygen. The vet found some matter stuck in her lungs through the x-rays, and determined Whimsy seemed to be suffering from aspiration pneumonia after her choking incident. Later that evening, her breathing had seemed to stabilize, and we were able to take her home with some antibiotics for the night.

When I woke up on Friday morning, Whimsy was starting to gasp and wheeze again, and began to open mouth breathe. I ran her back to the clinic and they put her back on oxygen. It is now November 1st, and she has been at the clinic on oxygen since October 26th. During her time there, she seems stable while in oxygen, but when she is removed or becomes stressed, she goes back to struggling to breathe. She is still luckily happy to eat, and is defecating and urinating regularly. We haven’t seen much improvement or further decline since admitting her, her condition seems to stay the same. The vet seeing her has experience with rabbits, but does not have any experience handling a case of rabbit  Aspiration Pneumonia. I’ve also had difficulty finding much information online about this type of condition with rabbits.

Here’s what we’ve done so far:

X-rays – Shows signs of gunk in her lungs. Will be taking updated x-rays soon to see if any improvement.

Antibiotics – She has been on Baytril I believe, (Will be double checking when my Vet calls today). They upped her dosage as of last night.

Oxygen – She has remained in oxygen, relatively stable in there, but having lots of difficulty breathing when removed.

Nebulizer – The Vet tried a nebulizer once, and claimed it made her a bit more mucus-y. (I would assume that this might happen with a nebulizer though because it’s suppose to help break up what’s in the lungs and get it out, so maybe this isn’t a bad thing)?

Contacting other Vets – I have reached out today to 3 other vet clinics in my area with Rabbit Savvy vets to see if anybody else can help give us more information, am currently waiting to hear back from them.

My question for others in this forum is have any of you dealt with Aspiration Pneumonia in your bunnies before? (Even experience with regular Pneumonia welcome). Did your bunny recover? What did you do to help them? How long were they on oxygen? What does the recovery timeline look like? Any experiences, knowledge, suggestions, or kind thoughts are welcome. I am so worried about her and am trying everything and anything to help her.