Nosebleed, breathing issues, not eating

[LucyP]

Hi all

Our lovely Winnie started making honking noises late last night and when we picked her up we could see she had some bright red blood on one nostril and then some from the other. Not gushing by any means but clearly visible. She’s been eating and acting normally all day. Her breathing since we saw the blood doesn’t sound right, as if she’s congested.

Her resting respiratory rate is about 54 when it’s normally 70-80 but the emergency (non exotic) vets said not to worry too much about that.

We called the emergency vet number who said to keep an eye on her and if we’re still concerned to take her to our regular vet today (exotics). They don’t open til 10.30 but we should be able to get her seen quickly as they offer emergency appointments.

However I am worried she doesn’t seem to eating (we’ve offered a variety of things including small oats and tiny bits of rocket). She nibbles at the hay but doesn’t seem to take it in. I’d like to try syringe feed - we have emeraid but as she seems so terribly congested I don’t want to risk aspiration. Should I hold on til the vets see her or should I be trying to give her syringe? She seemed
To be eating well until last night. As I wrote this she is sniffing at some hay but not really going for it.

And does anyone have any advice about what we might want to ask the vets about?

She’s 4 and a half.

Many thanks
Lucy

 

[LucyP]

Sorry I meant to say she HAD been eating and acting normally all day up until the point her nose started bleeding. She still sounds honky now even when she’s not eating.

 

[VickiA]

I’m so sorry I’ve no experience of nosebleeds. I hope that the vet can check her over today for you

 

[LucyP]

Thank you - they said to bring her straight in so we’re on our way. She had some very finely grated carrot and pepper (basically tiny bits of mush) just now and has been begging at the bars so she wants to eat, which is good. But not able to manage hay it seems. All very worrying - no idea why she’s been bleeding.

 

[LucyP]

We’re at the vets and the honking noise seems to have stopped but the bleeding started again briefly when we got here. Maybe stress related?

Her heart and lungs sound ok and her temperature is normal.

He looked in her mouth and nose so far as you can with a tiny pig and couldn’t see or feel anything obvious but can’t rule out anything.

He’s taken a swab of her nose blood and is looking at it now.

They want to keep her in for feeding and obs and possible oxygen/nerbuilser if needed. I hate the idea of her being further stressed but she’ll have her friend Mabel with her and the nurses here are good. Given that they close soon and we won’t have any emergency help after that I think I’m going to admit her and see what happens next.

Thanks

 

[Wiebke]

Thank you - they said to bring her straight in so we’re on our way. She had some very finely grated carrot and pepper (basically tiny bits of mush) just now and has been begging at the bars so she wants to eat, which is good. But not able to manage hay it seems. All very worrying - no idea why she’s been bleeding.

Hi

All the best at the vets. Glad that you have got an exotics you can access on a Sunday. Nosebleeds, like any ongoing or large bleeds, count as an emergency in the UK.

Please still syringe feed - hay makes over three quarters of what a piggy eats in a day. Feeding via the mouth is avoiding the congested area. Guinea pigs are not good mouth breathers, so when their small and narrow airways are blocked enough, the need to breathe will assert the priority it has over the need to drink and only thirdly the need to eat. If the nose is painful/injured, then chewing may increase the pain in the injured/painful area.

 

[Wheekallweek]

Aw poor Winnie. Fingers crossed they can find out what's causing her issues and it's nothing serious

 

[LucyP]

Thanks all.

They’re keeping her in for feeding and monitoring - I know she’ll hate it but she’s got her friend with her at least and they won’t be separated unless she needs oxygen briefly. he said if he bleeding stops completely and she perks up and eats on her own we can bring her home. But they’re just not really sure atm.

. At this stage they don’t want to do any scans that would need anaesthetic until they know more about her general state. They might try to get a very small amount of blood from her leg (?) to test for anaemia.

 

[LucyP]

Hi

All the best at the vets. Glad that you have got an exotics you can access on a Sunday. Nosebleeds, like any ongoing or large bleeds, count as an emergency in the UK.

Please still syringe feed - hay makes over three quarters of what a piggy eats in a day. Feeding via the mouth is avoiding the congested area. Guinea pigs are not good mouth breathers, so when their small and narrow airways are blocked enough, the need to breathe will assert the priority it has over the need to drink and only thirdly the need to eat. If the nose is painful/injured, then chewing may increase the pain in the injured/painful area.

Thanks this is really helpful. Their exotic nurses will be feeding her today but we can pick this up at home if needed. He says they’ll go gently given how congested she’s been. The honking seems to have stopped completely at the moment. Weird how the blood comes and goes. They’ve also mentioned vitamin K.

 

[LucyP]

Thanks for your advice all.

Here she is normally (pic 1) and then after the nosebleed. Tiny little face so not easy to examine.

 

[Wheekallweek]

Gorgeous baby

 

[Eriathwen]

Good luck at the vets! I've only recently had the same issue with my Fern. She was being nebulised every 4 hours to help clear her airways so she felt able to eat again, she wasnt able to have any food for about 24 hours due to how badly she was gasping for air while hospitalised on oxygen and first sent home, so then of course we had to battle the onset of stasis.. if you can get a nebuliser to treat her at home through her recovery it may help with her eating, it certainly made all the difference to Fern, we used diluted F10sc in ours, although Ferns lungs were awful, filled with fluid and to begin with we were told she didn't have much working lung tissue.

She ended up having 2 nose bleeds, she irritated the inside of her airways with all the sneezing. Luckily they stopped after the 2nd day of strong antibiotics. And once her nostrils cleared she became able to eat for herself again.

I hope your little one has a quick and uneventful recovery!

Here's Fern with her little bloody nose, poor thing. Her first nosebleed was for 20 minutes however the second one went on for a couple of hours, very scary to see but luckily ended up not being serious.

 

[Wiebke]

Fingers firmly crossed. Nosebleeds are one area where so many really different (some frankly really weird but thankfully rare) issues can be behind it. You have to take each case on its own merits.
But she is in the safest of place to ensure that she keeps on breathing through the worst of the crisis.

 

[LucyP]

Good luck at the vets! I've only recently had the same issue with my Fern. She was being nebulised every 4 hours to help clear her airways so she felt able to eat again, she wasnt able to have any food for about 24 hours due to how badly she was gasping for air while hospitalised on oxygen and first sent home, so then of course we had to battle the onset of stasis.. if you can get a nebuliser to treat her at home through her recovery it may help with her eating, it certainly made all the difference to Fern, we used diluted F10sc in ours, although Ferns lungs were awful, filled with fluid and to begin with we were told she didn't have much working lung tissue.

She ended up having 2 nose bleeds, she irritated the inside of her airways with all the sneezing. Luckily they stopped after the 2nd day of strong antibiotics. And once her nostrils cleared she became able to eat for herself again.

I hope your little one has a quick and uneventful recovery!

Here's Fern with her little bloody nose, poor thing. Her first nosebleed was for 20 minutes however the second one went on for a couple of hours, very scary to see but luckily ended up not being serious.

View attachment 234268

Thanks so much and so sorry about little fern. She’s gorgeous! Glad it was nothing serious.

 

[LucyP]

Fingers firmly crossed. Nosebleeds are one area where so many really different (some frankly really weird but thankfully rare) issues can be behind it. You have to take each case on its own merits.
But she is in the safest of place to ensure that she keeps on breathing through the worst of the crisis.

Thanks very much. We are lucky to have access to a vet on Sundays.

 

[LucyP]

Update- she’s had a couple more nose bleeds at the vets and she was making the hooting/gurgling noise again briefly but when the vet picked her up she sneezed and the noise stopped.

She’s had 30 ml of critical care which is good. They couldn’t get a blood sample from her leg.

He said if she’s still bleeding intermittently tomorrow they’ll consider what next in terms of tests such as X ray but we are proceeding with caution as we don’t know how well she is overall. It’s the difficulty of not knowing if this is a local trauma or something more serious.

They haven’t given her Vitamin K yet as that can apparently cause issues. Diet wise I doubt she would be deficient in that but maybe she will need some more if there’s a clotting issue.

So we’re still none the wiser. Good that she’s relatively stable and eating but the stress of hospitalisation is not ideal and it’s hard to know what to do next. With the x ray I guess we’d need to think about the pros and cons.

For now we’re just hoping she remains stable overnight and that the bleeding stops. It hasn’t happened for 3 hours and it’s not much blood coming out but it’s happening and that can’t be right.

On inspection of her cage at home I did later see a splattering of small blood spots on the corex wall, consistent with a bloody sneeze I think.

Poor little thing.

Thanks for all the advice and support.

 

[LucyP]

Good luck at the vets! I've only recently had the same issue with my Fern. She was being nebulised every 4 hours to help clear her airways so she felt able to eat again, she wasnt able to have any food for about 24 hours due to how badly she was gasping for air while hospitalised on oxygen and first sent home, so then of course we had to battle the onset of stasis.. if you can get a nebuliser to treat her at home through her recovery it may help with her eating, it certainly made all the difference to Fern, we used diluted F10sc in ours, although Ferns lungs were awful, filled with fluid and to begin with we were told she didn't have much working lung tissue.

She ended up having 2 nose bleeds, she irritated the inside of her airways with all the sneezing. Luckily they stopped after the 2nd day of strong antibiotics. And once her nostrils cleared she became able to eat for herself again.

I hope your little one has a quick and uneventful recovery!

Here's Fern with her little bloody nose, poor thing. Her first nosebleed was for 20 minutes however the second one went on for a couple of hours, very scary to see but luckily ended up not being serious.

View attachment 234268

We do have a nebuliser for Mabel (although haven’t used it yet as her upper respiratory issues seem to have settled). I’ll remind the vets of this and ask if they think helpful for Winnie at home. Thanks.

 

[LucyP]

Morning all.

Update on Winnie who is still in hospital.

Positives - her nose hasn’t bled for over 12 hours and she’s taking syringe feed well.

Her gums look healthy (they’ve been wondering about anaemia).

Concerns:

She’s not eating on her own and has dropped weight. I know this might be partly stress related (even when she went into hospital only as a companion to Mabel who had a chest infection recently, Winnie came back lighter than when she went in, she doesn’t respond well to stress, but even so, to be eating nothing on her own is clearly not good).

Her resting respiratory rate, although still in normal range is apparently higher than it has been (I didn’t get the number) and he says there was some effort breathing- but her lungs sound clear.

We’re still none the wiser re why she has been bleeding in the first place.

The current plan is they keep monitoring and feeding her today, and unless she deteriorates, we bring her home tonight to see if the home environment is calmer and helps with her eating and breathing. We’ll also be nebulising her with F10 as they said it’s helping keep her airways hydrated. Also if there happens to be anything fungal he said it could help with that (?). Can infections cause nose bleeding?

After that we wait and see. If she returns to normal we can hopefully be ok but if she continues to not eat or if the bleeding comes back we’d be looking at next steps. CT has been mentioned as an option but it’s a 2 hour round trip in a taxi and all day in another hospital, so I don’t want to stress her with that unless it’s essential. I asked about conscious X ray (which our main vets can do on site) but he wasn’t sure they’d get much from that (she’s a really tiny pig and it’s such a small area) and he said that could also be a bit stressful. Also if it showed anything on x ray they’d probably want a CT scan to fully see it anyway.

So I’m at a loss really and really stressed about her, but trying to take it one step at a time.

Thanks and will keep you posted.

 

[VickiA]

Oh bless you and Winnie. All any of us can do in a situation like this is to take it one step at a time. I hope she starts eating again once she comes back home.

 

[LucyP]

Thanks so much.

We’ve just got her home. No more bleeding since yesterday (touch wood) and she’s been munching away on hay and veg since she got back. She’s also having a good trot around her home and looking really perky, I think they’re both glad to be home. Mabel let out a long happy purr when we got them out of the carrier.

Winnie’s plan is gabapentin, ranitidine, critical care (with a pinch of bisolvon powder in it) and f10 nebulisation. When she eats and poos normally on her own we can stop the feeding.

She does seem unusually thirsty tonight and I’m wondering if that’s in response to the meds. She normally goes several days between drinks but she’s been at the water bottle a few times since she got home.

Anyway I’m really happy that caused the bleeding doesn’t seem to be bothering her now and long may that continue. If it comes back though we’d have to consider more investigations.

Thanks all

 

[LucyP]

Edit- sorry I meant to say I’m happy what whatever caused the bleeding (and we still don’t know) doesn’t seem to be bothering her at the moment.

 

[Freela]

I hope that she makes a full recovery and that it's just one of those random one-off things. One of my past pigs had intermittent nosebleeds in her old age- real scary gushers. We saw the vet but no underlying cause was ever nailed down... we were told it could be anything as serious as a tumor or as minor as a hay poke (because it happened on and off over months, I'm not sure it was either of those things.) She lived to be about 6.5 years old before passing of seemingly unrelated causes, it was just one of those things that we never figured out.

 

[LucyP]

Thanks so much for sharing that and for your good wishes.

So far, touch wood, she seems to be recovering really well, she’s eating and pooing well and her weight has stabilised since we got her home and is back in her normal range. We’re weighing daily and topping up with a bit of emeraid as she’s at the lower end of her normal range, but she’s eating well on her own and begging for food at the bars etc, tucking into piles of hay so I think we’ll probably stop that today. As per vet instructions we also stopped the gabapentin and ranitidine last night. She’s still eating well this morning so I’m hoping that means she’s over the worst of whatever this episode has been and that pain is not an issue. So in that sense I couldn’t be happier.

It still bothers me that she had the nosebleed and we don’t know why, so I’m wary about assuming it’s all fine now in case there is still an issue. But I guess all we can do is be glad she’s so happy and perky at the moment. She’s acting as if nothing ever happened bless her!

Her greedy friend Mabel snuck up and tried to run off with the emeraid syringe I was feeding Winnie with last night, they can be surprisingly strong and grabby when they’re determined can’t they!