Girls can sometimes either pass a stone or have one manually extracted with forceps - and yes we've had both - but the boys have tinier tubes and apparently an awkward corner in the urethra. I'd speculate that the sphincter between the bladder and urethra that holds all the pee in must be pretty tight too!
My boy on the left is George. He's 6 now, and had bladder stone surgery last month. I was in bits obviously. But George had been diagnosed some months before and it was the second stone he'd formed so I was in two minds what to do. The first happened last summer when we had all that heat but fortunately for us it formed actually in the penis and grew out of nowhere, seemingly overnight, to the size of a bean. The vet was able to just squeeze it out. There was a groove along one side where he'd peed, so he'd had a very lucky escape because his pee wasn't blocked and this is really important. A blockage is the worst thing - so hoping they might be able to pee it out (and boys have very tiny tubes) is a big gamble.
George was OK for a month or so and then started to squeak when he peed and it was tinted with blood. He'd developed a UTI and x-ray showed he also had another stone but this time in the bladder. It was a real hard slog for him to shift it because the 1st choice antibiotic (Baytril) didn't have any effect and the second choice (Septrin) worked but it took weeks - then it came back - then we had to go on it for weeks again - and it knocked the stuffing out of poor George's appetite so he felt very rough and had to be syringed every day to help him along. Finally we got rid of the thing, stopped the AB, and his appetite came back with gusto but he still had his stone and had good days and bad days. I will say though, his symptoms from the UTI were much more acute than from when he just had the stone and he was pretty miserable some days and just tolerating life on others. But when the AB finished he got his lust for life back and so I realised that it wasn't fair at this point to just keep him on painkiller and wait for old age to take him. I've lost pigs after surgery before but I have a lovely vet and they said they would use gas anaesthetic as it is 'gentler'. He's pulled through... although it's a fine line (and possibly just a matter of time) to forming another stone...
Here are his two x-rays. The first shows a 1.3kilo boy in October '22. Look at the size of the stone compared to one of his spinal vertebrae. The second shows a 930g boy in Jan '23. He'd lost most of the weight while on the ABs. Can you see that the stone has gotten significantly bigger? We think that the calcium that precipitates out in the pee (making their pee a bit cloudy - pretty normal) had been clinging to the stone so that it grew like a snowball. George's stone was completely round. This is the other thing I didn't consider back in October - I just assumed that a stone would stay the same size. But ours grew and grew - so it was kind of inevitable that we'd have to do something eventually. However, we made the right choice not to do it at the time because of the stubborn UTI. George recovered from his op but he was wobbly for a few days because of the pain and the painkiller (buprenorphine - very effective but it put him off his food). He would normally have been given antibiotics as a routine precaution but we knew what the Septrin would do to him... if he'd have had to take that too I don't think he would have made it.
So the final thing is whether he's going to throw another stone. George is exceptionally thirsty and really likes to drink water from a syringe - it's his thing now. It might be a sign of kidney failure although he does appear to be in rude health and will also drink from a bottle. Some days George does squeaky wees again but so far there's been no blood and no real signs of infection, and so far it's passed after a couple of days and a
lot of water. So I'm hoping it's just sludge that he can pass rather than another stone. Vet is on stand-by for x-ray should we need it though.
George has the same diet as my two fat ladies and right now he only gets salad veg and not the tasty calcium-rich brassicas of his youth. We use bottled water that has the lowest calcium content I could find (many people filter their tap water as standard to reduce calcium). He guzzles 10-15ml water every night from a syringe while he munches his (limited) pellets. Yet George's urine pH is always slightly higher than the girls'. The test strips I have are not laboratory-accurate (amazon!) but the girls come up the same (8 or slightly over - supposed to be normal for pigs) and George is always a smidge higher (a comfortable 9). And I can't shake the idea that this is the source of his problems... but I don't know the cause. Urine infection with certain bacteria can raise the pH - but George doesn't really show any signs of this (and we've seen some UTIs in our time!) He is old - maybe it's an old kidney thing - I asked a GP friend if it's like this for old people and she'd not heard of anything like that. Then again we're omnivores so you'd expect us to be different. George also gets impacted and he has arthritis so perhaps that affects it. Or maybe it's all my imagination and there's nothing to it at all! I know that when vets test for piggy pH they're generally thinking about infection, and one of my vets once said untreated UTI can increase the chances of a stone in her experience although she thought it might be that free bacteria could form a nexus that can initiate the growth of a stone. Hence my UTI question. Again, that might just be anecdotal though...
I think I've blethered on enough. Make the most of your lovely boy and take some deep breaths. If anyone can see you through it's C&R. 3 days after George's surgery I said to my vet that if he passed that night it would still have been worth it because he was lying comfortably in his tunnel for the first time in months and he looked really peaceful. If you want the forum's tips for limiting calcium in the diet follow this link
Long Term Balanced General And Special Needs Guinea Pig Diets and if you can take the emotional rollercoaster that is George's tale have a look here
Stone me! George's secret...
Good luck, and keep us informed. We'll be thinking of you x
