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Sterile Cystitis Questions

HollysKingdom

New Born Pup
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Good morning, this isn’t urgent, but I could do with some advice please.

Bandit has been getting treatment from our vet since the Friday after Christmas when she was doing red pees.They’ve checked a urine sample and there were no crystals or bacteria (this is a new level to me, I’d previously understood piggy bladder problems were infection or stones). She had cat metacam for a week, seemed fine, stopped for a week, more red pee. Consulted vet again, was advised to continue metacam for 10 to 14 days and get a supplement. She suggested Oxbow urinary support (except there’s supply issues) but not Cystease as it’s designed for cats, there’s no scientific research using it for guinea pigs and we don’t know the dosage (her words, not mine).

Anyway, we’re now on day 10 of 1kg cat-sized loxicom dose every 12 hours, and. day 4 of sliding from Science Selective Grain-free nuggets to Piggie Parcels joint and bladder support pellets. Bandit seemed fine again, enjoys taking metacam from a syringe and seems somehow calmer and more relaxed since eating the new pellets.

But, about 10pm yesterday she went to bed and sat there squeaking. I sat her on a white towel on my lap, and there was more red pee, her tummy was very sore, squeaking “don’t touch”.

This morning she is fine again, popcorns and zoomies to say good morning, eating, drinking, had her metacam dose, behaving normally. I’ve phoned the vet and they are giving me more metacam to use for another week before they will want to see her again.

I’m now wondering if starch/sugars in her diet are a cause. The issue started after they’d had a carrot cottage for Christmas (Minx’s carrot and nugget mine 🙄) and yesterday’s pain was after they’d had green oat readigrass in the afternoon, I don’t know if these piggies have had that before, and they don’t normally get carrots.

So, questions…

Is it likely to be diet-related? Maybe she is sensitive to something that doesn’t affect the other two.

Should I ignore the vet and try Cystease anyway?

Will cranberries help, if I can get her to eat/drink them?

Apologies for the amount of text, needed to explain xx
 
I'm sorry to hear this.

Cramberries will not help with piggies with uti and it won’t help sterile cystitis. The sugars may in fact make things worse

Yes Sterile cystitis seems to be set off by a change in the diet so if they don’t normally get carrots then yes it is possible it has caused this flare.

When a piggy has sterile cystitis, metacam is needed for life at a maintenance dose along with glucosamine. The dose can then be increased during a flare and once the flare has passed it can go back down to maintenance dose.
It will take several weeks of glucosamine for it to have an effect and help ease symptoms.
Cystease is something very commonly used amongst forum piggies with this issue.
 
I'm absolutely not the most experienced about this but the one thing I do know is that it takes a couple of weeks for the glucosamine levels to build up. This is what makes them more comfortable by soothing the bladder.
My Sir George had a squeaky wee last week (the first one I heard) so I gave him Johnson 4 joints (instead of cystease) as a booster for a few days as he has the joint support pellets too and (fingers crossed) he seems fine now. Obviously if he gets bad he will be getting seen by the vet.
This is just my experience, I hope it helps.
 
Thank you, fingers crossed the new pellets will help her. I’m gonna have to talk to the vet about metacam doses and duration, wish me luck.

Also, I will be even more scrupulous about what they eat xx
 
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