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Hello! Let me start by saying that I understand the primary causes of head tilts, I am looking for opinions/advice
That being said, Whisper is quite a mess… let me start from the beginning. Whisper is a three-year-old Holland Lop that I rescued when he was four months old. I heard about him and decided to give him a chance, so he took a four-hour plane ride to me. He seemed fine then, but we’ve been through a lot since then.
Not long after he was neutered he started developing chronic ear infections – so after his 8th infection or so we did a cross lateral resection on his ears (cut away the skin to expose the canals). This reduced his number of infections.
A few weeks later he became very skinny (you could see the bumps on his spine – he looked like a dinosaur). We found that he was severely anemic (PCV was 20, normal is 35). It persisted despite our best efforts, so we sent out a bone marrow biopsy thinking he might have leukemia. The results were shocking – he has IMHA (Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia) which is where the immune system attacks the body. His own body was destroying itself, and this diagnosis has never been heard of in rabbits before. We waited two weeks and repeated it to make sure… and it came back the same. With no previous cases to rely on we consulted an internal medicine specialist. He was put on Cyclosporine, Omeprazole, and Prednisone. Once put on those meds he became immunosuppressed – opening him up to twice as many infections. He constantly gets inner ear infections and bacterial infections. A few months ago we weaned him off of the Omeprazole but we haven’t been able to wean him off of the others. It’s been two years and he has never had a PCV above 30, but he’s not as bad as he used to be.
A few months ago his CBC revealed schistocytes and acanthocytes, both signaling liver problems. We checked his blood and it was normal, but it looked strange on the ultrasound (done by three different vets) and the CBC continued to be odd. When we went to do an x-ray his stomach was full of fluid and we couldn’t see very well. We decided to take him for an exploratory surgery/liver biopsy. When the surgery was over we learned that the fluid was gone and the liver looked normal, and the biopsy came back normal too. He didn’t want to breathe on his own for surgery and took an exceedingly long time to wake up… the vet wasn’t sure he would wake up. He finally did and had hind limb weakness. He wasn’t able to hop in a straight line and his legs kept going out from under him. Frustrated, we took care of him as he healed and worked on his hind legs. Eventually, you couldn’t tell they were weak except for the occasional tremble that he never had before. Two weeks later he developed an intestinal hernia and needed to go back into surgery. He recovered better this time, woke up fine and resumed eating right after
Recently he just started gaining weight and is at an all-time high (1.6 kg) which is much better than his normal 1.1-1.2 kg. He’s had at LEAST 15 ear infections and 3 bacterial (discharge from the nose). He’s been fine until recently… he developed a head tilt a few days ago. He has damage because of so many infections… if he stands on his hind legs he falls backward and rolls (without a head tilt) and thrashes before he can get up. With the head tilt it’s a bit worse, but I’m not sure what to do.
Does anyone have any opinions/advice for us?
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