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Not really sure what to do - Sterile IC flare

Tr1cky

Tr1cky

New Born Pup
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One of our pigs, James, has interstitial cystitis. He's on cystease twice a day, we're feeding him an IC diet and he's on dog metacam twice a day and it's just not getting any better :(

If anything his squeaking is getting louder and more distressing sounding.

Weirdly, aside from the squeaking when pooing he's still active, not withdrawn and is still eating normally and seems fairly normal. It's just when the poor little thing needs to poo he's obviously in pain.

My wife's taking him to the vets this afternoon. She's going to mention cartrophen injections but she's also thinking it might be time to put him to sleep and stop him suffering.

Does anyone have any tips before we do something we can't undo?
 
Tr1cky said:
One of our pigs, James, has interstitial cystitis. He's on cystease twice a day, we're feeding him an IC diet and he's on dog metacam twice a day and it's just not getting any better :(

If anything his squeaking is getting louder and more distressing sounding.

Weirdly, aside from the squeaking when pooing he's still active, not withdrawn and is still eating normally and seems fairly normal. It's just when the poor little thing needs to poo he's obviously in pain.

My wife's taking him to the vets this afternoon. She's going to mention cartrophen injections but she's also thinking it might be time to put him to sleep and stop him suffering.

Does anyone have any tips before we do something we can't undo?
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Hi!

How long has he been on his sterile IC meds? They usually take several weeks to really build up and come through. It is likely that your boy has got a flare on top of his ongoing level. You can in the short term double the cystease and give 1 capsule every 12 hours to help bring the flare under control. You can also up the metacam/meloxicam dose quite a bit with your vet's permission to ease the pain during a flare in the short term.

A lot of living with a sterile IC piggy is firstly getting it under control as much as possible and then learning what level of daily medical maintenance they require and how much you need to up the glucosamine and the analgesic in order to bring any flares, which will happen every few weeks, under control as quickly and best as possible. Since sterile IC can range from borderline (stress-related flares) to mild, medium, severe and VERY severe you have to find your own most effective management level by trial and error. You might want to discuss with your vet rather than a given medication dosage also how far you can up his medication safely during an acute flare. You are rather in the medium range from the sound of it, so all is not lost. ;)

I would definitely give the cartrofen a chance of your vet is willing. Please keep weighing him once weekly to monitor his overall food intake; hay is making abour 75-80% of the daily food intake but you cannot control it by eye - and it is generally the first food group that is impacted.

However the fact that your boy is still having a normal life and is not losing his appetite means that he has still got plenty of quality of life.
It is likely more distressing for you as a caring owner to make you feel helpless that would be behind any decision to pts but you need to take a step back to look at the level on which your piggy still has quality of life (i.e. being able to live normally and having quite literally an appetite for life) rather than your own emotions when you make decisions like that - not easy when all you want is a happy, health pet.

HUGS
I hope that this helps you?
 
We have already doubled the dose of the cystease. He's getting one capsule in the morning and one at night. It just doesn't seem to be putting a dent in it :(
 
Hi there, I'm 'The Wife'. Thanks for your message. Really thought we were getting on top of this until after just before Christmas when he started this flare up, which I just cannot control. He's always on 1 capsule of Cystease daily and I have upped this to two a day when this first started. He's on 0.25ml of dog Metacam twice a day now and the past week his squeaking has got even worse and much, much louder. His is on the IC diet, filtered water and plenty of hay with grain free nuggets but he's stopped eating these. His appetite does go, the more Metacam he's on and he's lost weight since I last had him at the vet last on the 14/01/22. The whole IC has now been ongoing since it was diagnosed back in June 2021 last year and I am just feel at a loss as to how to help him. I feel cruel pumping all these drugs into him twice a day. He is staying in his pigloo a lot more to sleep whereas he usually sleeps next to his cage mate, on either side of their cage divider. I'm also worried that the vet won't prescribe the cartrofen, as they can sometimes be funny prescribing things. I'm just at my wits end with it all and feel so helpless hearing him in obvious agony.
 
Hi, I'm not an expert and you've been given amazing advice above 💖 I have a ic piggy who we were struggling to control pain in. After some time on 1ml of dog metacam twice a day and 2 cystease capsules she was still in obvious pain too. I asked my vet about cartrophen, we tried it and saw improvement after the second injection, and have since been able to lower her metacam to 0.6 twice daily as well as the cystease back to 1 capsule a day :) it might be worth asking if you can up the dog metacam too :)
Good luck and sending hugs! 💖
 
helenmarie80 said:
Hi there, I'm 'The Wife'. Thanks for your message. Really thought we were getting on top of this until after just before Christmas when he started this flare up, which I just cannot control. He's always on 1 capsule of Cystease daily and I have upped this to two a day when this first started. He's on 0.25ml of dog Metacam twice a day now and the past week his squeaking has got even worse and much, much louder. His is on the IC diet, filtered water and plenty of hay with grain free nuggets but he's stopped eating these. His appetite does go, the more Metacam he's on and he's lost weight since I last had him at the vet last on the 14/01/22. The whole IC has now been ongoing since it was diagnosed back in June 2021 last year and I am just feel at a loss as to how to help him. I feel cruel pumping all these drugs into him twice a day. He is staying in his pigloo a lot more to sleep whereas he usually sleeps next to his cage mate, on either side of their cage divider. I'm also worried that the vet won't prescribe the cartrofen, as they can sometimes be funny prescribing things. I'm just at my wits end with it all and feel so helpless hearing him in obvious agony.
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Hello,
The people on here are brilliant with advice. I really feel for you. You are going through exactly the same as I did with my boy snowflake. He battled with sterile IC cystitis for 5 months. He had loads of different pain relief, IC diet. Mineral water. I used to give him extra water by syringe throughout the day. He had a X-ray last September fine. But the bleeding wasn’t easing and he was the same as your boy crying then going on to acting normal. Wasn’t until January he started to loose weight. So I booked him in for another X-ray a few weeks back and the poor boy had developed a stone . We chose to put him down as he was very poorly. Could you have your boy X-ray to see if anything else going on?
Please read my old threads under the health threads... snowflake sterile IC as people on here gave me such good advice it may help you.xx
 
Awww I'm so sorry to hear that. He had an X ray last year which came up clear. Maybe I should ask for another x ray today. I think We've read your thread when we were trying to sort out James. xx
 
Snowflake said:
Hello,
The people on here are brilliant with advice. I really feel for you. You are going through exactly the same as I did with my boy snowflake. He battled with sterile IC cystitis for 5 months. He had loads of different pain relief, IC diet. Mineral water. I used to give him extra water by syringe throughout the day. He had a X-ray last September fine. But the bleeding wasn’t easing and he was the same as your boy crying then going on to acting normal. Wasn’t until January he started to loose weight. So I booked him in for another X-ray a few weeks back and the poor boy had developed a stone . We chose to put him down as he was very poorly. Could you have your boy X-ray to see if anything else going on?
Please read my old threads under the health threads... snowflake sterile IC as people on here gave me such good advice it may help you.xx
Click to expand...
My boy was on cystophan twice daily, 0.35 mls twice daily dog metacam and tramadol also kids calpol 0.18 mls x3 per day.
Which you the best luck. Just keep being strong for him.xx
 
helenmarie80 said:
Thanks for your message @Emx93. Is the Cartrophen a once a month injection that is given by a vet?
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We did once every 6 days at the vets for a month and she hasn't needed one since but can have more if she has a bad flare up again 😊 it's so nice to have my happy girl back, we're trying to lower the metacam further but 0.6 seems to be the dose she's currently happy at 💗
 
Snowflake said:
My boy was on cystophan twice daily, 0.35 mls twice daily dog metacam and tramadol also kids calpol 0.18 mls x3 per day.
Which you the best luck. Just keep being strong for him.xx
Click to expand...
Ahh ok. I would get another X-ray as I thought it was a long sterile IC flare but as he had a stone that’s why the pain meds weren’t helping him. The speacilst told me if he dropped weight then get him x rayed.
 
Snowflake said:
Ahh ok. I would get another X-ray as I thought it was a long sterile IC flare but as he had a stone that’s why the pain meds weren’t helping him. The speacilst told me if he dropped weight then get him x rayed.
Click to expand...
Cartrophan injections helped snowflake last year. He had one injection every week for a month. Then he was allowed to have another course 3 months later.
 
helenmarie80 said:
Awww I'm so sorry to hear that. He had an X ray last year which came up clear. Maybe I should ask for another x ray today. I think We've read your thread when we were trying to sort out James. xx
Click to expand...

After you posting more background information, I would recommend another x-ray just to make sure about any stones.

If maxing out on the oral meds is not working (it was not clear from the original post), then I would strongly recommend to giving cartrofen a try. In most severe cases it can really make a difference. So far we had only one case where it didn't work out.
 
All the best! Please let us know how you are getting on.
 
So James was at the vet yesterday and they agreed that, although he's obviously in pain when he's pooing it's possibly not as bad as we think it is because he's still very active / inquisitive and is still wheeking like mad when he knows there's food around. Certainly nothing wrong with his appetite!

He has been back to the vets this morning. He's having an x-ray to make double sure that he doesn't have stones and the vet has agreed to give him cartrophen injections. Hopefully this will help manage his issue.

They've also suggest switching him to a different painkiller so that may help too.

Thank you all again for your input. It's very comforting to have the collective knowledge of the forum to point us in the right direction.
 
That’s great news. And that he can have cartrophan injections. That will help him. My specialist said that guinea pigs remember pain and sometimes the crying becomes a habit.xx
 
All the best!

The squeaking is very disconcerting for any loving owner but all the best for the changes and improved support.
 
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