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Gwen's Sore Feet - Start of Bumblefoot? Heart?

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Thanks Sophie, I've got to drop something off at Vedra's tonight so might just take Gwen along with me. She had me so worried earlier, she's comfortable again but it also means she's sleeping a bit deeper.

Will try to get updated pics of her feet on soon, front ones are doing good, back ones are more of a bright pink than red/purple now but the scab has softened and loosened. Not going to pull it though, already know from experience it will come off in its own time.
 
Gwen is improving. She started on benazepril on Saturday, at the moment the dose is 1.25mg per day. She remains on the 10mg Furosemide with a view to reducing it slowly and, hopefully, withdrawing it altogether at some stage.

The difference in Gwen is subtle but at the same time, important:

- Lungs and heart sound clear, heart sounds a lot stronger;
- Calmer demeanour;
- Slightly increased energy levels;
- Laying down to sleep, not hiding away all the time;
- Even weight distribution, she looks like a different pig just in the change to her body shape;
- Eating more, and pushing the others out the way to get to food!

Still watching her closely but generally feeling relieved. We're on the right track.
 
They certainly do. I was very worried about being in the same position I was with Tuppy, where I knew the problem but couldn't help her. I guess the big difference is that Gwen had something audibly wrong, whereas Tuppy didn't despite all her symptoms. So to get the right treatment for Gwen has been so important to me, and I feel so lucky not to have gone through what I did with Tuppy again.

Thanks again for the support - means a lot. :)

I will get pictures, of feet and body shape. Just having to do a lot of catching up, a lot has happened in two days of not logging in!
 
So sorry to hear about Gwen Laura, I have just read through your entire post. Sending healing vibes to your gorgeous girlie, she is absolutely in the right place with you Laura, getting all the love, attention and help that she needs. Hope she continues to improve. Sandra x
 
Thank you Sandra. :)

It has been a week since I last updated on Gwen. She is doing amazingly well. The differences are many although subtle, yet as she has improved in so many ways she comes across as a totally new pig. There are aspects of her behaviour that I had put down to other things, I have noticed these are now gone. It seems all of her problems were tied in with the heart problem and the symptoms of the heart problem and I wonder if the case of unexplained drooling she had a few months back was tied in too.

I have altered her meds slightly. She had been on a regime of 1.25mg Benazepril in the morning and 10mg Furosemide in the evening. Unfortunately although she did well during the day, overnight her symptoms returned and we just weren't making the progress that should have been happening, or at least maintaining the progress we had made.
So I split both meds into twice daily doses, which is working so much better for her; it keeps her condition stable and is helping to make small but noticeable improvements each day.
Her current schedule is approx. 0.625mg Benazepril and 5mg Furosemide in the morning, and the same again in the evening.

Squinting - she always used to squint with her eyes, I had shrugged this off as light sensitivity, as all my pink-eyed pigs seem to be more light-sensitive. In hindsight, the degree of Gwen's squinting was severe and not normal. So to see her bright and wide eyed is wonderful!

She used to get very mucky on her underside very quickly from laying around a lot, her hair was thinning on her abdomen, her back legs almost had a wasting feel to them as though she'd no muscles there at all. Now, along with the even weight distribution and increased activity, these signs have gone too.

Her feet are improving very well, I trimmed a spur off one front paw but it's still a dryness/scab type of problem on those front feet. Her back feet are looking a lot better. None of her feet are "better" but they are doing better than they were. Still applying Perfect Paws twice daily.

It's like someone has shaved two years off her age. She will be an estimated age of 5 year, later this year. Three weeks ago she seemed older. Now, she's more like a 2 year old in her body condition. New and improved Gwenivere!

GwenTed.jpg


GwennyBodyShape.jpg


GwennyFrontPaw-1.jpg


GwennyHindFeet.jpg
 
So glad she is going so well and she has a lovely demeanour about her! Your determination and knowledge will have helped her no end!
 
Thanks girls. :)

I have a happy Gwen with the most fantastic spring in her step! The pig I once described as a loner is interacting with the other pigs and much more active. But she isn't just pottering about sedately as she used to. Last night I watched her 'skipping' to her hay and exploring every corner of the cage after I cleaned it, jumping onto toys and throwing her teddies around like nobodys business. She's not 100% right, but she's a solid 80% or so of the way there.

Which is brilliant given that a few weeks ago I was seriously thinking that she was living on borrowed time. I do still think that had she not started the meds when she did, she would have continued to deteriorate and slipped away. I have a couple of people in particular to thank for helping Gwen in her hour of need (and mine!) and they know how grateful I am.

She is still on the furosemide, but we missed a 5mg dose the other evening - she still had her benazepril but no furosemide as I unexpectedly ran out - and she had no return of symptoms the next morning, so in the next day or two I am going to cut the furosemide down to 5mg once daily, instead of twice. Progress indeed! :)
 
It has been a while since I last updated on Gwen. On the whole, she really is doing so well but she does still relapse for a few days every so often - still trying to figure out how to get the miniscule increase in dose accurately when cutting the tablets up!

Reason for bringing this back up, I finally got a video of the breathing I described earlier in the thread, where she sits hunched and rocks back and forth as she breathes.

Of all her symptoms, it is the hunched up and breathing rocking her back and forth that she tends to relapse on every so often. I thought this video may be of interest to those who're not sure what I mean by the way I describe it!

She's still on 5mg furosemide 2x daily, and 0.625mg benazepril 2x daily. I think the benazepril dose would be better at 0.75mg 2x daily...as I said before, just got to figure out how to get from the current dose to the new dose accurately. :)

ETA - Just got to figure out how to embed the video too!
 
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That's fascinating, Laura. The reason I find it so is that my Sukie (who is no longer with us, as you know :( ), looked almost identical to Gwen, and did that very same breathing thing periodically for 3 of her 5 years she was alive! I always thought it would be her heart/breathing that would be the cause of her death, but it actually wasn't - it was her kidneys/urinary system.
 
Heart problems can put a strain on the kidneys, so it's possible Sarah.

The breathing has always been the single symptom that worried me the most, it's just not normal especially when it was even more severe than that shown in the vid. :(
 
Strangely, Sukie's breathing symptoms never worsened and she did that same breathing for 3 years. I would say it was pretty much identical to that shown in the video so, if Gwen is sometimes worse than that, it is worse than Sukie was. :(

Her feet were quite bad by the point that she died, and she'd been having GG ointment put on twice a day for weeks. Only part of that was due to the urinary incontinence, I'm sure.
 
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tTPBE97PwM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tTPBE97PwM[/ame]

That was embarrassingly easy to embed. Oh well, least the vid is up!
 
Aww, poor wee mite! It looks like she's rocking herself! She's so lucky to have you... With most other owners she would not be around...

Is she liking her new living arrangements?
 
Thanks. :)

Just before starting her on treatment, she did this pretty much all the time. She'd fall asleep in that position, her nose actually on the ground.
This video was taken yesterday, so the episode didn't last as long and wasn't as severe. She seems to do absolutely brilliantly for a few days or weeks, then has a few days of relapsed symptoms, almost like she's done too much and has worn herself out a bit.

She's very happy in the new group (or should I say old group minus Saffron rolleyes), thanks for asking. She's actually coming right out and getting her fair share of food now, big big difference to how she used to be last time she was in a larger group. It's a stress-free group now that Saff isn't in with them.
 
Poor Gwen. Hope she feels better soon. :rose

Thanks for sharing the vid Laura. It really does help to see what people are talking about. x
 
She's certainly very fortunate to be in such capable hands!

My Yossi has rocked back and forth before, although very occasionally and hasn't done it in a while. I mentioned it to my Vet yesterday and she said that, in his case, it was probably due to the occasional abdominal/intestinal pain he seems to have been experiencing after eating certain foods.

Although the cause of Gwen's rocking is probably not necessarily food related, the Vet did say that the rocking motion was generally a response to pain, with pain from the back of their body causing them to rock forwards and pain from the front making them rock backwards. To me it looks like Gwen is rocking forwards as the forward movement seems more pronounced. I doubt this helps you in the slightest but thought I'd mention as I'd discussed it just yesterday.

Really hope you can figure it all out and keep her on the right track. She always sounds like such a dear little sweetheart x
 
Another Gwenny update. She's generally ok, a few points of concern but still eating and happy to potter about, flake out and socialise, so still better than she had been before starting meds. :)

I have *finally* managed to increase her dose of benazepril. It took ages to twig onto how, but it's really very easy. The issue had been tiny tablets, just about easy enough to cut into eighths - which gave us a dose of 0.625mg to give twice daily (1.25mg daily total) - but impossible to accurately cut any slight alterations in dosage.

Why have I wanted to increase the dose - Gwen still relapsed on occasion, usually the breathing rocking forward and backward shown in the video earlier on the thread. If there is a chance these maintenance meds can eliminate all symptoms, then it's worth going for, give her the best possible quality of life back.

I know the maximum or "standard" daily dose can be as much as 2mg - or 1mg 2x daily - so I have quite a range to work with still.

I wanted to get the dose to 0.75mg 2x daily - or 1.5mg total daily. I eventually figured to look deeper on Guinea Lynx and came up with the answer, but posted to check. Quite simply, I turn Gwen's tablets into a liquid suspension; dissolve a certain dosage into a certain amount of water, so I am now able to adminster Gwenny's meds at an accurate dose and can alter the dose - accurately - as necessary.

At the moment the suspension is 1mg/ml, so I give 0.75ml 2x daily. For the sake of giving less liquid though (less chance of her spitting any out) I'm going to make a suspension of 2mg/ml - twice the strength - and give 0.375ml (half the dose). It sounds fiddly but easy to measure on a 1ml syringe...........and decidedly less fiddly than cutting tablets. :))

Only thing that slightly concerns me at the moment is her heart rate, seems a bit slower than the other piggies, around 3 beats per second (approx. 180 bpm). Something to keep an eye on. I am also wondering if she is getting a touch arthritic too - toes are all bony and gnarled, and she's walking a little stiffly on her back legs. She's a little quieter than usual lately, but may be down to the possible arthritis or the warmer weather or just everything building up again. Hopefully the altered meds will get her back on the right track again.
 
I know you won't rest until you've exhausted all possibilities so you still have every chance of getting that finely poised balance just right. Best of luck x

I've heard that feet can become gnarled in older pigs. Can this happen anyway, on it's own, or is this always a sign of arthritis?
 
It can happen anyway, the toes often twist and become bony looking as pigs age. I'm thinking possible arthritis for Gwen as she seems stiff in her back legs as well, but the "bonyness" of her front feet is striking.
 
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