I still believe I killed my Guinea pig in an awful way and I can’t forgive myself for it

[Aaaaa7]

The vet has left me utterly confused as to what happened. First it was respiratory issues. Then it was possibly dental issues. They didn’t do a full examination of his stomach because it would be “too painful” as though him dying alone overnight wasn’t equally as painful. They would sedate him for proper diagnostic testing because it was “too late in the day and it would take him too long to recover.” Then as he was dying I was told it was a tumor on his liver. Then in an email I was told an enlarged liver. And of course they haven’t answered my questions related to potential gut stasis and a blockage.

I believe he had gut stasis and/or a blockage. And because I kept feeding him, his liver enlarged because of the blockage and I ultimately killed him in a terrible and painful way. And I am guilt ridden.

Maybe he was doomed by the time I got him to the exotic vet. But at least if they’d done proper diagnostic testing, he could have died at home and said goodbye to me and his cage mate and not suffered in pain alone all night. Instead they instructed me to feed him EVEN MORE when they knew it wasn’t clear whether he’d been pooping and they’d done nothing to check for any of this. They didn’t even discuss gut stasis with me.

Are there any vets on here? I mean it’s what makes the most sense right? That my actions ended up killing him…

I have asked the vet council for a review and am waiting to hear back. But I already know this is what happened. He likely had a minor URI and I essentially fed the poor thing to death. But he was hunched and hurting to begin with so I just pray to god I didn’t do this to him. But in my gut and my heart I just know that I did.

 

[Freela]

I promise, gut stasis doesn't cause liver enlargement. He did not get an enlarged liver or a liver mass because of you feeding him when he wasn't eating. If anything, it's the opposite. He didn't want to eat because he had a liver mass. If he had any element of gut stasis, it was because he had a tumor that was taking up space in his abdomen.

You didn't do anything wrong here. He had a mass, possibly a malignant mass, and no amount of food you gave or didn't give would change that basic situation. Please be kind to yourself here. You're not to blame here. ((HUGS.))

 

[exia]

I think we all know that feeling of guilt when a pig gets sick. Its so hard and stressful to care for them because its like every part of their bodyfunctions gets affected. You lost him in a very sad way, but you didnt do him wrong. You gave him a life of happiness and love and you care for him even after his death. I really hope you can get a proper answer from the vet. Do you have someone to talk with about how you feel? You're in my thoughts

 

[Piggies&buns]

I completely agree with Freela.
The issues with the liver were the reason he stopped eating. The liver did not enlarge because you fed him.
When they stop eating and go into stasis you must feed them. To be blunt, if you don’t feed a piggy when they are in stasis then it will contribute to death. But not every stasis can be reversed as it depends on what has caused it in the first place.

Please don’t blame yourself - you did nothing wrong at all and you didn’t cause his death.

 

[Wiebke]

Hi

The vet has left me utterly confused as to what happened. First it was respiratory issues. Then it was possibly dental issues. They didn’t do a full examination of his stomach because it would be “too painful” as though him dying alone overnight wasn’t equally as painful. They would sedate him for proper diagnostic testing because it was “too late in the day and it would take him too long to recover.” Then as he was dying I was told it was a tumor on his liver. Then in an email I was told an enlarged liver. And of course they haven’t answered my questions related to potential gut stasis and a blockage.

I believe he had gut stasis and/or a blockage. And because I kept feeding him, his liver enlarged because of the blockage and I ultimately killed him in a terrible and painful way. And I am guilt ridden.

Maybe he was doomed by the time I got him to the exotic vet. But at least if they’d done proper diagnostic testing, he could have died at home and said goodbye to me and his cage mate and not suffered in pain alone all night. Instead they instructed me to feed him EVEN MORE when they knew it wasn’t clear whether he’d been pooping and they’d done nothing to check for any of this. They didn’t even discuss gut stasis with me.

Are there any vets on here? I mean it’s what makes the most sense right? That my actions ended up killing him…

I have asked the vet council for a review and am waiting to hear back. But I already know this is what happened. He likely had a minor URI and I essentially fed the poor thing to death. But he was hunched and hurting to begin with so I just pray to god I didn’t do this to him. But in my gut and my heart I just know that I did.

Your piggy has died from his liver going wrong and causing all sorts of knock-on effects and secondary complications, which is not at all uncommon in frail piggies. There is nothing you or your vet have done wrong.

In the end, his body has quite simply closed down. Once that process is underway, there is nothing anybody can do to reverse it. It is a one way street with no place to turn around.

Diagnosis and especially treatment of inner organs in guinea pigs are sadly still lagging badly behind other species. Not your or your vet's fault; it is decades of lack of research/financial incentive for research because guinea pigs and small pet rodents have very much fallen into the gap of being a 'short-lived' children's pet that is classed as an exotic but is not exotic enough for the real buffs and all too often not considered worth being taken to a specialist, which means less chances for practical experience for the treating vets.
Diagnostics have now improved enough for more than a vet guess but there is very little to nothing that can be done medically, sadly.

Transfer of medications from other species sadly doesn't work as well as in other areas because rodents have a different metabolism.


Please seek help for the pernicious pet bereavement mind loop and PTSD symptoms you are stuck in. If necessary ask via your own doctor as you are in Ireland. The problem is sitting in your mind.

HUGS

 

[Aaaaa7]

Hi



Your piggy has died from his liver going wrong and causing all sorts of knock-on effects and secondary complications, which is not at all uncommon in frail piggies. There is nothing you or your vet have done wrong.

In the end, his body has quite simply closed down. Once that process is underway, there is nothing anybody can do to reverse it. It is a one way street with no place to turn around.

Diagnosis and especially treatment of inner organs in guinea pigs are sadly still lagging badly behind other species. Not your or your vet's fault; it is decades of lack of research/financial incentive for research because guinea pigs and small pet rodents have very much fallen into the gap of being a 'short-lived' children's pet that is classed as an exotic but is not exotic enough for the real buffs and all too often not considered worth being taken to a specialist, which means less chances for practical experience for the treating vets.
Diagnostics have now improved enough for more than a vet guess but there is very little to nothing that can be done medically, sadly.

Transfer of medications from other species sadly doesn't work as well as in other areas because rodents have a different metabolism.


Please seek help for the pernicious pet bereavement mind loop and PTSD symptoms you are stuck in. If necessary ask via your own doctor as you are in Ireland. The problem is sitting in your mind.

HUGS

I'm coming around to the fact that it might not have been my actions, especially because he was sick prior to all of this. But I’m still not convinced on the part of the vet. He had a strong heart rate when I first brought him in. It’s like they didn’t even try to diagnose him. Why have evening appointments if you’re not going to sedate at that time to properly diagnose? It was a veterinary hospital and they could have kept him overnight. And not wanting to do a throughout examination of his stomach because it might cause him pain? He was likely in pain the entire night because he wasn’t properly diagnosed? I just don’t feel as forgiving of the vet here, but maybe it’s just because I am new to all of this.

 

[Aaaaa7]

I think we all know that feeling of guilt when a pig gets sick. Its so hard and stressful to care for them because its like every part of their bodyfunctions gets affected. You lost him in a very sad way, but you didnt do him wrong. You gave him a life of happiness and love and you care for him even after his death. I really hope you can get a proper answer from the vet. Do you have someone to talk with about how you feel? You're in my thoughts

The people I have to talk to haven’t owned Guinea pigs and don’t really understand. The vet still hasn’t responded. I keep doing better with it then reconvincing myself it was me all over again.

 

[Aaaaa7]

I promise, gut stasis doesn't cause liver enlargement. He did not get an enlarged liver or a liver mass because of you feeding him when he wasn't eating. If anything, it's the opposite. He didn't want to eat because he had a liver mass. If he had any element of gut stasis, it was because he had a tumor that was taking up space in his abdomen.

You didn't do anything wrong here. He had a mass, possibly a malignant mass, and no amount of food you gave or didn't give would change that basic situation. Please be kind to yourself here. You're not to blame here. ((HUGS.))

But couldn’t he have gotten liver enlargement from a blockage and undigested food? I know not super reliable but I don’t have any professionals to ask right now. But could his liver enlarge because it’s struggling to digest and/or pass poo? Because that’s what AI said and the vet hasn’t clarified (although it hasn’t been that long yet), and this is my fear. Although I am coming around to he likely had liver issues before he stopped eating. He had a lot of lumps. I got them tested and monitored him weekly for more. They weren’t cancerous. But maybe he had one in his liver, too? There is still more I could have done and things I missed, but that’s different to my actions directly did him in. I’m coming around to that’s not what happened, however. I just need to distract myself late at night as that always seems to be when my brain convinces me of this theory. I tried for a week to keep him alive all by myself and then the vet gave me a really hard time about not having enough money after I spent a bunch of money that week on meds and vet visits. They later said nothing could be done, but all of it together has messed me up and made me feel responsible.

 

[Wiebke]

I'm coming around to the fact that it might not have been my actions, especially because he was sick prior to all of this. But I’m still not convinced on the part of the vet. He had a strong heart rate when I first brought him in. It’s like they didn’t even try to diagnose him. Why have evening appointments if you’re not going to sedate at that time to properly diagnose? It was a veterinary hospital and they could have kept him overnight. And not wanting to do a throughout examination of his stomach because it might cause him pain? He was likely in pain the entire night because he wasn’t properly diagnosed? I just don’t feel as forgiving of the vet here, but maybe it’s just because I am new to all of this.

It is always much easier to trace the path through a maze back than when you have to walk it blindly in reality. I cannot tell you the findings, thought processes and circumstantial constraints (staffing, free spaces etc.) your vet has had to deal with.

All I can say is that it is never as easy or as straightforward as you seem to think; especially when the symptoms for the underlaying cause (which obviously kept on deteriorating during that whole period) were obviously anything but obvious and clear; I have lost piggies over the years to suspected liver failure (that was in times when even a diagnosis was hard to come by) and the symptoms were usually pretty diffuse.

Being a vet is all too often still more like being a detective dealing with an incomplete or partially wiped crime scene than rather wielding a magic wand like a super-vet, and hey presto... here is your problem on a silver platter.

Please give yourself and your vet space to be normal beings who cannot take a quick sneak peek at the outcome and have to do everything the hard way. Sometimes, it sadly just doesn't work out.

It has nothing to do with your determination and level of care; there is no entitlement to a good outcome but if your own internal default set is not allowing for failure, then you will always struggle with seeking the fault either in yourself or in others but be unable to accept that you will never win them all. It has sadly become a very common attitude and problem for especially the younger generation of women.

Watching a beloved one (human or pet) deteriorate and die can be very traumatising. A natural death is a lot more physical than you would expect and your helplessness in stopping it or easing it can overwhelm you; especially if it is your first loss or it triggers previous bad experiences.

 

[Wiebke]

But couldn’t he have gotten liver enlargement from a blockage and undigested food? I know not super reliable but I don’t have any professionals to ask right now. But could his liver enlarge because it’s struggling to digest and/or pass poo? Because that’s what AI said and the vet hasn’t clarified (although it hasn’t been that long yet), and this is my fear. Although I am coming around to he likely had liver issues before he stopped eating. He had a lot of lumps. I got them tested and monitored him weekly for more. They weren’t cancerous. But maybe he had one in his liver, too? There is still more I could have done and things I missed, but that’s different to my actions directly did him in. I’m coming around to that’s not what happened, however. I just need to distract myself late at night as that always seems to be when my brain convinces me of this theory. I tried for a week to keep him alive all by myself and then the vet gave me a really hard time about not having enough money after I spent a bunch of money that week on meds and vet visits. They later said nothing could be done, but all of it together has messed me up and made me feel responsible.

Hi

Bloating or GI stasis can be secondary complications to ongoing serious health issue, like liver failure, but not the other way round. With a blockage, you would have experienced constant salivation.

This guide here may help you get some facts around the digestive system straight:

Thread 'Wiebke's Guide to Tummy Trouble'

May 31, 2024

1 Available Gut Medication
2 Mild and Medium Bloating Symptoms
- Milder bloat
- Secondary bloating
- Thickened bowel (IBS-like symptoms)
- Build-up of fluid in the body cavity
3 Severe Bloating
- Severe Bloat (Dysbiosis)
- Blockage
- Twisted or trapped gut (volvulus and hernia)
4 GI Stasis (No Gut Movement)
- Sudden full GI...

• Wiebke
• Replies: 4
• Forum: Wiebke's Guides to the Body

• 

Thread 'Wiebke's Guide to Poops'

May 30, 2024

1 How the Digestive System Works
2 Poo Eating (Coprophagy)
3 Health Monitoring: Weighing vs. Poos Watching
- What does weighing do?
- What does the poop output tell you?
4 Minor Poop Issues
- How to deal with a minor tummy upset
- Funny poops: What do they mean?
- Caked on poops
5 Serious Diarrhoea
6 Impaction
7...

• Wiebke
• Replies: 3
• Forum: Wiebke's Guides to the Body

• 
• 

 

[HollysKingdom]

Hi, I don’t wanna step on anybody’s toes, but @Wiebke is absolutely right. I spent a horrible 3 weeks last October trying to save Nova who died we believe with a kidney tumour, blaming myself for not noticing sooner, blaming the vet for not giving the “right” gut motility drug, for not prescribing enough pain relief, for their clumsy diagnotics… Believe me, they are trying their best.

As a chronic worrier/anxiety sufferer, I’ve found hindsight is not helpful, it can be a hurtful thing. Please do ask your doctor about mental health support. Its easy to say “stop worrying”, far less easy for us to actually do it, it takes a lot of practice. Sending you lots of hugs

 

[Eriathwen]

I was thinking of you yesterday when I had a memory come up on my phone about my piggy Clover. She passed away suddenly, I felt a lump in her abdomen and luckily I had access to an exotics specialist at the time who was a qualified pathologist. She did a post mortem on her to allay my worry of anything I had missed. The lump I had found had been her liver, which had become very pale pink and hard. Her liver failing was ultimately what had caused her passing, however what caused her liver to fail, along with all her other organs was a brain tumour. Had I not had access to her specifically, I never would have known about the brain tumour..

I guess what I'm trying to say is, even in death, these little critters hide so much, and unless you've spent years specialising in them, you wouldn't be able to figure out what they've been hiding, you can't know what to look for if you don't know what to look for, if that makes sense. That specialist has said to me several times now that when she teaches other vets she always has to elaborate that "we do this for rodents..except guinea pigs because they're weird" so even exotics vets not specialised in guinea pigs can easily get it wrong.

I have force fed many, many guinea pigs in my time, ones with stomach cancer, ones with tumours around the oesophagus, abdominal masses, lung masses, enlarged hearts..not once have they been made worse by feeding too much, honestly with guinea pigs, there's no such thing.

Blockages are also extremely rare in guinea pigs, unlike rabbits and other animals. With rabbits, often you have to confirm with a vet that it's not a blockage before syringe feeding, that's not the case with guinea pigs as it is almost a non event. Not pooping is incredibly normal with gut stasis and wouldnt have been a sign of a blockage, rest assured you did absolutely everything right. You did what I would have done in your position.

 

[exia]

The people I have to talk to haven’t owned Guinea pigs and don’t really understand. The vet still hasn’t responded. I keep doing better with it then reconvincing myself it was me all over again.

Like @HollysKingdom says, please ask your doctor for some kind of mental support. Its hard to loose a pet, and when you're a thinker its so easy to blame yourself and only see what you think you should have done and not what you actually did for him. I'm so sorry you feel this way and I really hope you can get closure and understand you're just a loving owner that did everything in your power to give your boy his health back. You lost him in such a horrible way, and its not your fault. Read @Wiebkes guides. They are really helpful!

 

[Freela]

But couldn’t he have gotten liver enlargement from a blockage and undigested food? I know not super reliable but I don’t have any professionals to ask right now. But could his liver enlarge because it’s struggling to digest and/or pass poo? Because that’s what AI said and the vet hasn’t clarified (although it hasn’t been that long yet), and this is my fear. Although I am coming around to he likely had liver issues before he stopped eating. He had a lot of lumps. I got them tested and monitored him weekly for more. They weren’t cancerous. But maybe he had one in his liver, too? There is still more I could have done and things I missed, but that’s different to my actions directly did him in. I’m coming around to that’s not what happened, however. I just need to distract myself late at night as that always seems to be when my brain convinces me of this theory. I tried for a week to keep him alive all by myself and then the vet gave me a really hard time about not having enough money after I spent a bunch of money that week on meds and vet visits. They later said nothing could be done, but all of it together has messed me up and made me feel responsible.

Flat out NO, that's not how the liver works. I'm not a doctor, nurse, or vet, and I'm in no way qualified to give out medical advice, so this is NOT medical advice, but that said I work in the medical field in a clerical/editing/transcribing capacity, I have read literally thousands of medical reports, and I PROMISE you this is not how the liver works. The liver will not enlarge based on overfeeding/force feeding/gut stasis. Liver enlargement is because of liver disease, not anything that has been eaten. He had liver disease, either a tumor or some other kind of organ disease that caused enlargement or a bulky liver. It's got nothing to do with anything you fed him. You did everything you possibly could do to save him, but his liver was failing because of disease. None of this is your fault, please let yourself off the hook here! You did everything you possibly could and you clearly loved him a lot and gave him a wonderful life! It's just unfortunate that sometimes piggies get an illness and nothing we do can help them (I just lost a young pig in the fall from a combination of thyroid disease and a respiratory infection that looked like it was getting better until she suddenly collapsed and died. I KNOW how much it hurts when this happens- I think everyone here does.) It really hurts to lose them and it hurts to try everything and lose them in spite of that, but this is nothing you did wrong.

 

[Mrs Tiggy Winkle]

Please seek help for the pernicious pet bereavement mind loop and PTSD symptoms you are stuck in. If necessary ask via your own doctor as you are in Ireland. The problem is sitting in your mind.

Underlined by me.... From a fellow PTSD sufferer (cptsd in my case), please don't take this underlined sentence badly. I'd say the problem is partially in part of your mind it's easy to reach when trauma-triggered, which you are undoubtedly rn, (your amygdala) but hard to influence from your cognitive mind. Also being stuck in a mind loop has the 'advantage' of allowing you to not feel your emotions as closely as you might otherwise. I'm well on the cptsd recovery road, but I still don't like to feel.

If you can't get to your doctor, don't like him/her anyway, can't get an appointment or whatever, try
Pet Loss Support Online | Guidance and Healing Worldwide | Light After Loss
Losing a Pet - Irish Hospice Foundation
Pet Loss | Mosaic Psychotherapy

I haven't read these pages, I just googled out of interest while wondering what online trauma (cptsd) website I could best send you to explain what's going on. It seems there's a lot of pet bereavement support in Ireland. Possibly you have to pay for the best of the best (idk because I didn't read that far) but on the above websites, there's certainly free help too (I did notice that) in the form of information.

From a cptsd point of view, generally we carry a lot of unshed tears for child parts of us and for tons of past loss(es) including possibly deaths but not only that. You may be feeling these with your grieving for your piggie now. That also is normal even when you're well on the road to recovery, unfortunately.