Life Long Respiratory Illness?

[bluebell513]

Hi there! I recently got a pair of young rats that pretty quickly developed a respiratory infection. After a few weeks of treatment, one unfortunately passed away. The original plan was to keep the remaining rat alone until he was given a clean bill of health and then introduce some new companions. But now the vet is saying that he will likely never get over the illness and it will be something that comes back throughout his life. What should I do? I definitely don't want to keep him alone, but I also don't want to risk the health of other rats by housing them together. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[SQ]

I am very sorry for your loss.
You are right, your remaining rattie needs a friend.
Did your vet take a culture?
What type of respiratory infection did your vet say it was?

How experienced with rats is your vet because if rats are not starting to get better after a ffew days on antibiotics then the antibiotics are changed or another antibiotic is added ..... and other meds may also be added depending on what the problem is.

If it was a myco fare up, all rats have myco so that would not be a reason not to get your rattie a same sex friend

Please check out our Reference Thread REFERENCE Thread - Read Only

 

[bluebell513]

He did not take a culture, and has only called it an upper respiratory infection. Simon, who passed away, developed a lower respiratory infection before he passed. Benjamin, my remaining baby, has been on 3 medications over the past month. The first for roughly two weeks before a second was added when Simon developed the more serious infection. Then yesterday I was told to discontinue those two and start using Azithromycin for three weeks. As of right now Benjamin is pretty much only sneezing, and every now and then breathes a little heavier than usual.

 

[SQ]

Azithromycin is pediatric friendly but is much more effective when used with baytril

 

[bluebell513]

Baytril was the second medication he was on for roughly two weeks.

 

[lilspaz68]

Baytril AND Zithro are a really good combo to cure difficult infections. If you can only keep.him on the one do the zithro for a month and see where you are. It's possible your rats had a contagious virus and those can turn into pneumonia really fast no matter what you do. These take longer to be cured by antibiotics so just keep treating for a month.

 

[SQ]

Just so you know, when antibiotics are helping, rats need to stay on them for 4 to 6 weeks in order to completely recover … and when they are not starting to help after a few days, then the vet needs to either add an antibiotic or other meds or try different antibiotics

 

[bluebell513]

We've seen a lot of improvement, like I said he's really just sneezing off an on at this point. My main question was whether or not it would be safe for other rats to join him once he recovered fully because the vet said he'd likely relapse throughout his life.