Maintenance pain meds for HED rat?

[DadRat]

Dom (32 months) is getting ornery in his old age. By that I mean he has started refusing to take food with his nightly glucosamine in it. If he is like me, I notice it and hurt more after a few days of missed doses. Also, his HED is advancing further and his rears are almost totally useless anymore, so he is pulling himself around the lowest level, and spending about 90% of his day curled up asleep in the igloo. He is on Baytril, which may become an "until the end" thing for him, to keep his chronic URI's at bay.

Would there be any harm in trying him on Infant Ibuprofen for a few days to see if that perks him up any? He is not showing signs of serious pain, but just generally looks like he is really feeling his age. If he does perk up some, is there any harm is a daily maintenance dose?
His cage mate Gregory has been on daily benadryl for a good year or more for whatever it is that he is allergic to (we suspect rats).

 

[jorats]

I would not give pain meds on a daily basis/until the end. It can affect his liver and kidneys. But trying it for a couple of days would be ok.
I've had a few rats with complete HED and to be honest, they've never shown any pain. They adapted and the worst of it was they developed amazing upper body strength due to the pulling themselves around. Rodeo hasn't had any use of his lower body for at least 4 months now and he's definitely not in pain. He sleeps more but that goes with age. I did have a rat develop seizures but that was much later in life and it seemed related to the spine. If you touched a certain area on his spine, Vincent would go into a small seizure. But that didn't happen till almost a year after his HED had set in. Vincent was 39 months when he passed.

 

[lilspaz68]

With HED I too discovered no pain...the nerves are dead so no impulses firing from them. He's probably decided there's no real reason to do a lot for so much effort, when he has his Slave to bring him everything his little heart desires. Try him on the ibu to see if there's any residual discomfort that can be helped, but don't be surprised if there's no real change. I might dose a rat on daily pain meds for certain things, like Leo with his abdominal tumour, keeping him comfortable until its his time, but for HED? Maybe a little here and there if I noticed discomfort but not a maintenance dose.