Trying to wrap my head around the loss of Gulliver

[Cheryl]

My boy passed on Sunday at 430pm. He passed after two days of being unwell and three vet visits. Thursday night, we noticed that he had soft cecotrophes but this has happened before and he had eaten a treat, so we didn’t think much of it. His belly sounded gassy so I gave him a belly rub and he seemed to be okay. By the next morning, he was quiet and not wanting to eat. I made a 9am appointment to get him seen and was told he had stasis, which I had expected. He had a slight head tilt as well but had a wax plug in his ear, so the vet attributed it to that. I asked about EC as a possibility but she said he was not presenting as an EC rabbit and she would not want to treat him without at least knowing he was positive for having it in his system as she has seen the treatment cause anemia or bone marrow failure. He had shown slight regenerative anemia when he had his dental filing in August so she didn’t want to take the risk. The next day he still wasn’t great and his eye was watering, so we saw the local farm vet. She said the wax plug was gone but his ear canal was extremely inflamed so we went home with ear meds. That day, he ate his pellets and parascoped to touch his nose to mine. He had a brief episode of “panic” in which he flew into his room but I attributed it to needing to use the litterbox. The next day (Sunday) he looked awful. He laid around all morning, was limp, and didn’t want to take his medications or handfeeding formula as he had Friday and Saturday. I brought him to the emergency clinic where the vet said he was concerned about EC due to lack of visual abilities (pupils responded to light but he didn’t neurologically) as well as his immense weakness and agreeability. He sent me home with Panacur and gave him a dose of Carafate after doing xrays and bloodwork, which showed no physical abnormalities but his liver enzymes were quite high and he was anemic and had very low WBC. At the vet, he had a 107.6 fever. This came down when he got home to a 101.6. A few hours after being hone, I tried to handfeed him so he could take his first dose of medication and he was extremely limp. He then had another hyper spell in which he jumped/fell off the couch and flew into his room, crashing into everything before collapsing. I held him for about five minutes while I called the vet. I told him if he needed to go, I understood. He had another panicked moment, jumped from my arms into his box, then went into a seizure and passed away. The vet said the hyperactive moments were a type of seizure. I had a necropsy done and they found several mature blood clots in his abdomen, diffuse pitting lesions on his kidneys, a small spleen, and a fractured liver. They said the findings were consistent with EC. I am beating myself up. Could I have saved him? What if I had pushed to start the treatment sooner? I know it is not guaranteed to work, but could it have? Or would it have made him go more quickly due to the anemia? The vet said the necropsy showed no reason for why he was so anemic, so either he had a slow bleed over a long span of time, he had a brain bleed, or he had bone marrow failure.
I am also running through everything I could have done wrong. What if there was something wrong with his hay that I didn’t know about? Or something in his cardboard box that he chewed on that made him sick? He was a year and a half old. He was too young. I’m devastated for his loss and his best friend, one of my cats, is also grieving. I did everything the vets told me to do. I stayed with him and told him how loved he was. I’m just so broken. I lost Lola on Christmas Eve last year from some kind of enterotoxemia – she went within 12 hours of showing symptoms. We were so excited to have Gulliver spend his first Christmas with us and now his ashes won’t even be here.

[Luna]

I’m so sorry about the loss of your bun. It is that much sadder that he passed before you could celebrate Christmas with him. It sounds like you gave him great care, and I don’t think there was anything else you could have done. Treatment for EC requires around 28 days of Panacur, so even if you had started on the Panacur on his first vet visit, I don’t think it would have been effective. Also, I don’t know anything about anemia with buns, but I’m sure that complicated things as well. 

Binky free Gulliver

[Bam]

I’m very sorry you lost Gulliver. I agree with Luna about the Panacur, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The changes in his inner organs would not have been reversed by treating with Panacur for a couple of days. Panacur only kills the parasite, it doesn’t reverse the damage already done.

It’s so terribly sad he didn’t get to spend Christmas with you. Try to not blame yourself. You couldn’t have done more than you did.

[Author]

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