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Bladder treatment

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Mclayton

Mclayton

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Hello. Now my piggie never been diagnosed with this, but my question is.. what veggies can trigger squeaking when doing a pee? Thanks
 
Hi, if your piggy is squeaking in pain when pooing or peeing, please see a vet for the correct diagnosis and treatment. Interstitial cystitis is normally diagnosed when everything else bladder and reproductive related has been ruled out.

High calcium veg should be avoided so things like parsley and kale as an example as high calcium veg can cause bladder stones to form and IC flares in a piggy diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. Filtering the drinking water and only feeding a tablespoon of pellets per pig per day is also recommended

A lot of us forum members feed the following diet Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
 
Claire W said:
Hi, if your piggy is squeaking in pain when pooing or peeing, please see a vet for the correct diagnosis and treatment. Interstitial cystitis is normally diagnosed when everything else bladder and reproductive related has been ruled out.

High calcium veg should be avoided so things like parsley and kale as an example as high calcium veg can cause bladder stones to form and IC flares in a piggy diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. Filtering the drinking water and only feeding a tablespoon of pellets per day per pig is also recommended

A lot of us forum members feed the following diet Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets
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I'm doing all these things. Low pellets, filtered water, low calcium veg. Never feed parsley, kale, spinach etc. He's been to the vets. Had x ray, urine sample twice. No stones, no crystals, no infection. He's perfectly normal otherwise. Its a mystery, as he goes a few days with no speaking, then all of a sudden, 3 times in succession. He has little gem or romaine lettuce every other day. Is it that, that triggers it, cos other days he doesn't have this, he's fine. Hes 10 month old
 
Sterile interstitial cystitis (sterile IC) is characterised by a lack or only a low presence of bacteria in the urine but is more usually diagnosed by default after all other potential urinary tract problems have been ruled out yet symptoms persist.
It cannot be healed and needs to managed; usually by glucosamine and metacam. The glucosamine is the more important bit since sterile IC seems to particularly affect the insulating glucosamine layer on the walls of the urinary tract that prevents corrosive urine from coming into very painful contact with raw tissue. Once the issue is initially under control your piggy will experience regular flares every few weeks or months. The severity of sterile IC can vary from the really mild to the really bad. Milder to medium cases can be treated with oral glucosamine while for the more severe cases, cartrofen has now been proven to bring relief in any but the very worst cases. Milder to medium cases can go away on their own but you are looking at years rather than months.

Unfortunately, while sterile IC has become increasingly common over the last 15 years and is now more common than a UTI in indoors piggies, it is still mostly unknown outside vet circles dealing frequently with guinea pigs.

What we recommend is to tighten up our normal diet advice a bit further and to not vary as much; you are not aiming for a calcium free diet because that can cause its own problems if you miss the 'sweet spot' in your diet but to further eliminate any veg that is richer in oxalates and which can contribute to the formation of stones. Any new food, like fresh spring grass, you need to introduce even more slowly than with your other indoors piggies after a long winter break.

You CAN feed lettuce to IC piggies that are used to it (it has made frankly not made any difference for my Breila in the four years she had IC) and fresh grass as long as it is on a near daily basis. What our own experiences with IC piggies over the last years have shown that it is more of a matter of new fresh foods being introduced too quickly/too much at once that can trigger a flare. The sensitivities are rather individual than connected to specific foods.
In any case, you will still get your regular flares. It is also going to take a few weeks for the extra glucosamine to build up in the body so it is not an instant fix.
For some reason my update of this chapter has not been saved and the outdated recommendation is still there.
@Piggie&buns @Claire W

Eventually you will have to work out how low you can get with the maintenance meds in between flares and how high you can go to get on top of an acute flare within a few days; upping the glucosamine in a flare is in my own experiments more effective than upping the metacam. Since sterile IC is on a huge sliding scale of severity, you have to do feel your own way in this in every individual case.

@Piggies&buns @Claire W
 
Wiebke said:
Sterile interstitial cystitis (sterile IC) is characterised by a lack or only a low presence of bacteria in the urine but is more usually diagnosed by default after all other potential urinary tract problems have been ruled out yet symptoms persist.
It cannot be healed and needs to managed; usually by glucosamine and metacam. The glucosamine is the more important bit since sterile IC seems to particularly affect the insulating glucosamine layer on the walls of the urinary tract that prevents corrosive urine from coming into very painful contact with raw tissue. Once the issue is initially under control your piggy will experience regular flares every few weeks or months. The severity of sterile IC can vary from the really mild to the really bad. Milder to medium cases can be treated with oral glucosamine while for the more severe cases, cartrofen has now been proven to bring relief in any but the very worst cases. Milder to medium cases can go away on their own but you are looking at years rather than months.

Unfortunately, while sterile IC has become increasingly common over the last 15 years and is now more common than a UTI in indoors piggies, it is still mostly unknown outside vet circles dealing frequently with guinea pigs.

What we recommend is to tighten up our normal diet advice a bit further and to not vary as much; you are not aiming for a calcium free diet because that can cause its own problems if you miss the 'sweet spot' in your diet but to further eliminate any veg that is richer in oxalates and which can contribute to the formation of stones. Any new food, like fresh spring grass, you need to introduce even more slowly than with your other indoors piggies after a long winter break.

You CAN feed lettuce to IC piggies that are used to it (it has made frankly not made any difference for my Breila in the four years she had IC) and fresh grass as long as it is on a near daily basis. What our own experiences with IC piggies over the last years have shown that it is more of a matter of new fresh foods being introduced too quickly/too much at once that can trigger a flare. The sensitivities are rather individual than connected to specific foods.
In any case, you will still get your regular flares. It is also going to take a few weeks for the extra glucosamine to build up in the body so it is not an instant fix.
For some reason my update of this chapter has not been saved and the outdated recommendation is still there.
@Piggie&buns @Claire W

Eventually you will have to work out how low you can get with the maintenance meds in between flares and how high you can go to get on top of an acute flare within a few days; upping the glucosamine in a flare is in my own experiments more effective than upping the metacam. Since sterile IC is on a huge sliding scale of severity, you have to do feel your own way in this in every individual case.

@Piggies&buns @Claire W
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He's been on cystease, 1 capsule a day for nearly 5 weeks.
 
Mclayton said:
He's been on cystease, 1 capsule a day for nearly 5 weeks.
Click to expand...

If that doesn't help to get it under control in between flares, perhaps your vet may want to look at cartrofen? Recent research has found that this also works for guinea pigs where cystease is not enough.
 
Hi. This is a very strange one. My piggie does a quiet squeak when doing a poo & pee together. He's fine when doing them separately. He's had an x ray, & that ruled out stones. His urine has been tested twice, & there's no crystals or infection. He's not behaving at all like he's ill. He's lively, eating, drinking etc. Excellent weight at 1.3kg. He's 10 months old. He's on a low calcium diet, no sugary treats, no apple, carrots. Never fed kale or spinach. Has filtered water, grain free pellets. Is on 1 capsule a day of cystease, which from today, I've increased to 2 capsules a day just incase it is Interstitial cystitis. Just wondering why he squeaks when doing a pee & poo together, but fine doing separately. Its all a mystery to me
 
Mclayton said:
Hi. This is a very strange one. My piggie does a quiet squeak when doing a poo & pee together. He's fine when doing them separately. He's had an x ray, & that ruled out stones. His urine has been tested twice, & there's no crystals or infection. He's not behaving at all like he's ill. He's lively, eating, drinking etc. Excellent weight at 1.3kg. He's 10 months old. He's on a low calcium diet, no sugary treats, no apple, carrots. Never fed kale or spinach. Has filtered water, grain free pellets. Is on 1 capsule a day of cystease, which from today, I've increased to 2 capsules a day just incase it is Interstitial cystitis. Just wondering why he squeaks when doing a pee & poo together, but fine doing separately. Its all a mystery to me
Click to expand...

Hi

Your boy is still a bit sore/painful at top pressure on the area but not when there is less of it.
Could you please keep any further questions to your initial thread which I am going to merge this one with. It is easier for us and better for you if we keep all information on an ongoing case together so we can give you longer term personalised and consistent advice.

Please accept that we are not part of social media so we can keep any support thread running for as long as needed and specialise in ongoing practical and moral personalised support for as long as needed.
We are however entirely run on a voluntary basis in our own free time, so none of us can be around all the time and answer all threads so it helps everybody when they can have a quick look at what has already been said and recommended to give you exactly the answers you need.
 
Wiebke said:
Hi

Your boy is still a bit sore/painful at top pressure on the area but not when there is less of it.
Could you please keep any further questions to your initial thread which I am going to merge this one with. It is easier for us and better for you if we keep all information on an ongoing case together so we can give you longer term personalised and consistent advice.

Please accept that we are not part of social media so we can keep any support thread running for as long as needed and specialise in ongoing practical and moral personalised support for as long as needed.
We are however entirely run on a voluntary basis in our own free time, so none of us can be around all the time and answer all threads so it helps everybody when they can have a quick look at what has already been said and recommended to give you exactly the answers you need.
Click to expand...
I'm new to this, so I didn't know i had to keep all this to my original thread. I'm sorry
 
Mclayton said:
I'm new to this, so I didn't know i had to keep all this to my original thread. I'm sorry
Click to expand...

We pre-date social media but are trying to make the best of our being different and independent. :)

It is not to blame you, just to help you make the best of the individualised ongoing support we can offer on here. Many new members have the same issues as you but you'll find your feet soon and hopefully find us a great and friendly place. ;)
 
Were the X-rays taken consciously or under sedation? Conscious X-rays can be helpful but in some cases they can miss the stone altogether as it can be covered by other parts of the body or just difficult to get the position right.
One of mine had a rather large second bladder stone that wasn’t captured by a conscious X-ray when it was first taken, however I wasn’t convinced so three days later I had another conscious X-ray taken and the stone was visible. If the cystophan is struggling to break through the pain, it could be worth having an X-ray under sedation taken if you haven’t done so already. I was having the exact same issue before I found his first bladder stone.
 
Little Ones said:
Were the X-rays taken consciously or under sedation? Conscious X-rays can be helpful but in some cases they can miss the stone altogether as it can be covered by other parts of the body or just difficult to get the position right.
One of mine had a rather large second bladder stone that wasn’t captured by a conscious X-ray when it was first taken, however I wasn’t convinced so three days later I had another conscious X-ray taken and the stone was visible. If the cystophan is struggling to break through the pain, it could be worth having an X-ray under sedation taken if you haven’t done so already. I was having the exact same issue before I found his first bladder stone.
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To be honest, I do think my vet has the right diagnosis. & not a bladder stone. His urine has been examined twice, & there aren't even any calcium crystals in his wee. He's been like this for 2 months, so surely if it was a stone, he would well be much worse by now. He is improving, with the help of a cystease capsule a day, which I've recently upped to 2 a day. There's no blood in his wee either. & urinated freely.
 
Mclayton said:
To be honest, I do think my vet has the right diagnosis. & not a bladder stone. His urine has been examined twice, & there aren't even any calcium crystals in his wee. He's been like this for 2 months, so surely if it was a stone, he would well be much worse by now. He is improving, with the help of a cystease capsule a day, which I've recently upped to 2 a day. There's no blood in his wee either. & urinated freely.
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Same went for my boy too, particularly with his first stone. No crystals in the urine, no blood, just pain that went on for the months unchanging. He was on cystease one to two capsules a day but it wasn’t touching it. He was also put on antibiotics in case it was a UTI but it wasn’t. He finally had the op the first week in November after having pain since the start of September. He only had blood with his second stone, but there was no calcium or crystals in the urine then either. Maybe it is IC, but I would be pushing for an X-ray under sedation, particularly as you’re giving such a large quantity of cystease
 
Little Ones said:
Same went for my boy too, particularly with his first stone. No crystals in the urine, no blood, just pain that went on for the months unchanging. He was on cystease one to two capsules a day but it wasn’t touching it. He was also put on antibiotics in case it was a UTI but it wasn’t. He finally had the op the first week in November after having pain since the start of September. He only had blood with his second stone, but there was no calcium or crystals in the urine then either. Maybe it is IC, but I would be pushing for an X-ray under sedation, particularly as you’re giving such a large quantity
Click to expand...
 
I don't have the funds to keep going to the vets. He's only been on 2 cystease for 3 days. I'm been told different things on here. I'm very confused. Most seem to think its IC, & told me it takes ages for cystease to get in his system. He's only 9 months old
 
Mclayton said:
I don't have the funds to keep going to the vets. He's only been on 2 cystease for 3 days. I'm been told different things on here. I'm very confused. Most seem to think its IC, & told me it takes ages for cystease to get in his system. He's only 9 months old
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I would still be concerned that 1 capsule a day given for five weeks hasn’t managed to break the pain, particularly as half a capsule a day is the normal dose.
Cystease doesn’t take ages to get into the system in that sense, you should see an improvement relatively quickly, especially if you’re given larger than the standard dose, I’ve always seen improvement within less than a week. The only time I’ve seen it persist over a week with this treatment (without any sign of improvement) in my 3 IC pigs is when it was a bladder stone
 
Little Ones said:
I would still be concerned that 1 capsule a day given for five weeks hasn’t managed to break the pain, particularly as half a capsule a day is the normal dose.
Cystease doesn’t take ages to get into the system in that sense, you should see an improvement relatively quickly, especially if you’re given larger than the standard dose, I’ve always seen improvement within less than a week. The only time I’ve seen it persist over a week with this treatment (without any sign of improvement) in my 3 IC pigs is when it was a bladder stone
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He has improved though, since December 6th, when he started. He was first treated for a UTI. I thought it was very unlikely for a 8 month old piggie to have a stone. Thats how old he was when he started. I would never say it was a squeal, just a quiet little wheek. Now he can go a couple of days with nothing, then a day or two, just a couple of vocalisations. I'm still under the vet as he did have high glucose in his wee, (result of the pro c probiotic), he was taking, but nobody told me it was short term use. 8 carried on using it. Hopefully that's fine now. Another urine sample to the vets in 2 weeks time, so will mention it to her, if he's still vocal sometimes
 
Update. I have a vets appointment booked for Squeak on Monday with a small mammals vet to see why he's still squeaking intermittently when doing a wee. He's previously had an x ray last December which ruled out a bladder stone, & urine looked at twice, & no infection present or crystals. On low calcium diet, filtered water, grain free pellets & fresh foods include romaine, cucumber, pepper, tomato, coriander, little beetroot, mixed lettuce leaves. Apple once a week. Been on cystease for 5 weeks, 1 capsule a day, upped to 2 day since Sunday. Is a great weight of 1.3kg. Still sometimes squeaks when pees. Otherwise very healthy & behaving normally. 8 months old when all this started. He is now 10 months. Also, had his penis checked. Thats fine. So,,,, I hope seeing another vet can get to the bottom of his issue on monday
 
Can someone please tell me how long, roughly, it takes for baytril & metacam to kick in. Just upset. Squeak on his 3rd UTI since early December. I've done absolutely everything diet, water wise. He's had a bladder scan, all fine, urine, no crystals. He's been on baytril & metacam for 3 days now
 
VickiA said:
Has your vet considered whether this may be interstitial (sterile) cystitis ?
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She never mentioned it, but it could be IC, as she mentioned long term pain relief. There is bacteria present in his wee,,, she looked at it under a microscope,, hence the antibiotics as well
 
I know you’ve said on your other posts that he had an infection back in December which was cured by antibiotics. The vet had given him a clean bill of health a month ago via x rays and scans, with no infection, stones, sludge etc.
When we’ve been chatting on your other threads I don’t recall you mentioning a second another infection between December and this one now. I know you’ve been worried about powdery white pee and possible squeaking while peeing though.

IC is characterised by the fact that there is no bacteria, or sometimes very low levels of bacteria. Antibiotics may temporarily suppress but won’t treat it because there is no bacteria to treat. You then get recurring issues with pain when peeing/bloody pee etc. which don’t get better until the flare has settled down.

Are you still giving them both cytease (I know one of the piggies was only being given it as a preventative)?

You said he has had three doses of metacam and said Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Does this mean you’ve only been told to give metacam once a day? Metacam will start to work straight away but if you’ve only been given a low dose and not twice a day, then that could be why you’re still seeing pain.
What dosage of metacam have you been told to give?
 
Piggies&buns said:
I know you’ve said on your other posts that he had an infection back in December which was cured by antibiotics. The vet had given him a clean bill of health a month ago via x rays and scans, with no infection, stones, sludge etc.
When we’ve been chatting on your other threads I don’t recall you mentioning a second another infection between December and this one now. I know you’ve been worried about powdery white pee and possible squeaking while peeing though.

IC is characterised by the fact that there is no bacteria, or sometimes very low levels of bacteria. Antibiotics may temporarily suppress but won’t treat it because there is no bacteria to treat. You then get recurring issues with pain when peeing/bloody pee etc. which don’t get better until the flare has settled down.

Are you still giving them both cytease (I know one of the piggies was only being given it as a preventative)?

You said he has had three doses of metacam and said Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Does this mean you’ve only been told to give metacam once a day? Metacam will start to work straight away but if you’ve only been given a low dose and not twice a day, then that could be why you’re still seeing pain.
What dosage of metacam have you been told to give?
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There was bacteria in his wee on February 6th. It was only discovered as his wee was examined for sugar levels. Again, baytril cured it. The latest appointment on Thursday was because there was blood. (Been none since). Bacteria again found in his wee after been examined under a microscope. He is one 1 capsule of cystease a day, & just half for my other one as a preventative. This advice from my vet. He's on 0.4mls of metacam daily, & 0.54mls of baytril
 
Mclayton said:
There was bacteria in his wee on February 6th. It was only discovered as his wee was examined for sugar levels. Again, baytril cured it. The latest appointment on Thursday was because there was blood. (Been none since). Bacteria again found in his wee after been examined under a microscope. He is one 1 capsule of cystease a day, & just half for my other one as a preventative. This advice from my vet. He's on 0.4mls of metacam daily, & 0.54mls of baytril
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After examining his wee, yet again, she said no crystals present, just bacteria
 
I just think if he has had three separate antibiotic courses in three months, then to my mind he either has a very stubborn infection (which maybe isnt being treated correctly or for long enough at each course so some bacteria remain and then kick the infection off again?) or if the level of bacteria is very low, then IC may be a possibility. (IC being sterile ie no bacteria is present)

How long is this antibiotic course?

Is that cat or dog metacam?
They metabolise pain meds in around 12 hours so they really need pain meds to be given twice a day to cover the full 24 hour period.
 
Piggies&buns said:
I just think if he has had three separate antibiotic courses in three months, then to my mind he either has a very stubborn infection (which maybe isnt being treated correctly or for long enough at each course so some bacteria remain and then kick the infection off again) or if the level of bacteria is very low, then IC may be a possibility.

How long is this antibiotic course?

Is that cat or dog metacam?
They metabolise pain meds in around 12 hours so they really need pain meds to be given twice a day to cover the full 24 hour period.
Click to expand...
Its dog metacam. The previous 2 times, he was only on antibiotics/metacam for 1 week. This time, its 2 weeks of both. I didn't see this vet the first time around. The 2nd time, she seemed to think,,, because of the high level of sugar in his wee ( too much pro C), its kicked the infection off again as bacteria feed off sugar. This time around, his wee been a touch gritty cos of too many pellets(been reduced for a week now,). I'm wondering if the grit has aggrevated his bladder & started off another infection. Strange thing is, he rarely squeaks when he's in his cage, & there's enough wee. His behaviour is absolutely normal. Been popcorning this morning
 
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