Spaying and age?Ivy's surgery this morning.

[Melissa's ZOO]

So the vet had an emergency come in on Friday and by 4 p.m. he had not gotten to her. He wanted to keep her over night and do the surgery in the morning but I didn't want to leave her alone all night. So I picked her and took her back in this morning. Picked her up around 3 this afternoon. Poor baby has three incision areas and had a e-collar on (which I took off unless she starts to chew her spay stitches) she is still a little off but she is sleeping in her cube.

The vet said everything went very well. That there were no tumors on her ovaries or uterus but that her uterus was enlarged and full of fluid which was causing the vaginal bleeding so it is good thing I went ahead with the spay.

So she is recovering I have Metacam .1 ml every 24 hours for four days and .04 ml of Baytril twice a day for 10 days to prevent infection since the incision area on her hind leg is so large and will be the most exposed when she potties. Ivy weighs 14 ounces and the Baytril is the 22.7% dose is that the right amount? And is the Metacam the right amount?

 

[jorats]

That sounds about right for the Baytril. The metacam seems a little high. My vet will only dose at 0.01ml Are you sure it's a full 0.1ml?

 

[SQ]

My vet tells us to give one drop of metacam (from medicine dropper) every 24 hours.
That is about the same as what Jorats has said above.
0.1 ml sounds very, very high.

 

[user 78]

There are two concentrations of Metacam available to vets, and they can even make their own in house. Somewhere on the bottle there should be something saying so many mg/ml. Assuming he's using one of the suspensions : At 0.5mg/ml, Ivy is getting about the right dose for maintenance. At 1.5mg/ml, it's the correct dosage for acute, but a little high for maintenance. If the suspension is 1.5mg/ml, you could safely half her dose for the next couple of days and still relieve any pain.

The Baytril is a little low, though, for 22.7mg/ml. Ivy is aprox 397g, so at the lower range [5mg/kg] she should be getting about 0.09cc of Baytril twice a day. The low range recc'd dosage is good as preventative and maintenance.

 

[mamarat]

Sending healing vibes to your sweetie.

 

[Melissa's ZOO]

There are two concentrations of Metacam available to vets, and they can even make their own in house. Somewhere on the bottle there should be something saying so many mg/ml. Assuming he's using one of the suspensions : At 0.5mg/ml, Ivy is getting about the right dose for maintenance. At 1.5mg/ml, it's the correct dosage for acute, but a little high for maintenance. If the suspension is 1.5mg/ml, you could safely half her dose for the next couple of days and still relieve any pain.

The Baytril is a little low, though, for 22.7mg/ml. Ivy is aprox 397g, so at the lower range [5mg/kg] she should be getting about 0.09cc of Baytril twice a day. The low range recc'd dosage is good as preventative and maintenance.

The Metacam is the 1.5mg/ml. Right now Ivy in clearly in a lot of pain so I gave her the high dose tonight and we will see how she feels in the morning. Would it be better if I did half a dose in the morning and half at night or will it have the same affect as once every 24 hours?

I thought the Baytril was a little low but it is for prevention. But I gave her .05 cc it is just easier to measure that way.

Should I put the e-collar back on, since I know she chews out her stitches? I am not worried about the tumor stitches just her spay stitches.

 

[Debbie]

Since our other vet has joined our vet clinic (and specializes in pain management) I've learned the rats do very well with higher doses of Metacam. Our two girls who were just spayed yesterday (350grams) are on .07, and our Metacam is mixed at 1.5mg/ml. Violet, who had a tooth extracted, is getting a little higher dose, because the vet felt she would be in a bit more pain. She weighs 375grams and is getting .1ml....so that sounds about right to me.

I'm so glad to hear Ivy made it through surgery, but so sorry to hear she has the ecollar. If she has the external stitches, I'll bet dollars to donuts, she will go at those stitches. eCollar's suck, but they are a necessary evil. If Ivy get's her incisions open, there's a good chance infection could set in (even on baytril), and that would be very bad!

Ivy will need you to help her eat though. Try feeding her lots of soft yummy things like avacado, scrambled eggs, peeled grapes, cooked pasta etc. She might let you hold the food while she eats, but they get pretty good at proping their food. I've even had rats that can crunch on the hard stuff as if the collar wasn't even in their way.

Any chance you marked the collar, so you know how to get it back on? There's a fine line between too loose (where she'll just get it back off again) and too tight. I get it tight enough, I can just touch the tip of my fingers on either side, down by their neck.

The metacam is important though....if she's feeling painful, she'll be more apt to want at those stitches.

Sadly, I've never had a rat NOT go for the stitches. We'll give them out of collar time, but only when we don't take our eyes off them for a second! Thankfully, our vet uses internals...but when the surgery time goes longer, we have had the externals. I HATE the collar. But the rattie does get used to it after a couple of days. :sad3:

Hang in there, and do give Ivy a gentle scritch from me.

 

[user 78]

I always do the high dose for a day or two after the spay and then go from there. If she seems to be managing her pain okay after tomorrow, you could half the dosage with no problem or you could continue with the higher dose for the next 2 days. I've also noticed that my rats leave their incisions alone [for the most part] when I manage their pain. My first girl wasn't given any pain meds and she pulled out every single staple before we even got home. Oy! You want to give the dose once a day, though. Doing half in the am and half in the pm isn't going to have any beneficial effect.

Personally, I wouldn't use the eCollar at all, even if she does mess with her stitches. It's just going to aggravate her and make her miserable. Even if she does pull out her stitches, 99.9% of the time it's fine and doesn't need any special care other than keeping it clean and a course of Baytril. You may need to deal with an abscess after it's all healed up, but it's not that big of a hassle. Like I said, Mac had every staple out within 30min, and she had absolutely no problems with it. That night it was already mostly closed up, and within a couple of days it was completely closed. The internal stitches are what matter, and I've never really seen a rat go after those.

 

[Melissa's ZOO]

She is in pain, I had to shove the Metacam in her mouth but I got it in her and she doesn't want to move so it was easy she hurts to much to fight me.

The ecollar has snaps so it is at the proper size when it is snapped together so it is easy to put on and take off. Ivy has ripped all her stitches everytime she had surgery. So it kills me to put it back on but I think for a couple of days it is neccesary and I will take it off for a couple hours every night during out time.

 

[Debbie]

Poor Ivy :sad3:

I just hate to see them feel that way. I do hope she'll feel better in a couple of days. Our girls tend to feel painful for about two days, then they are good to go....even the older ones. My 2 girls that were spayed on Friday, are already ready to party. They are young though...so Ivy could take a few days.

I'm glad you are trying to keep the collar on her. We've had two girls that got at their stitches. One actually went for her internal stitches and I woke up the next morning to a horrible site. She not only got through all the internals, she dug even deeper. There was blood everywhere. The vet had to go back in, clean her up and stitch her back together. He even told me how bad it was and that she would undoubtedly become infected. We had her on both Cefa and Baytril....and by the next day, she had an abscess as big as a grape brewing. THANKFULLY, the double antibiotics went at the infection and she healed up. But Suzie was stuck in a collar for almost 2 weeks after that! I know many folks who have had their rats pull stitches and it apparently was ok, but my vet is HUGE on proper sterilization and care of sutures. If my rat pulls even one stitch, I get the biggest lecture :stickpoke: but I do agree with him. Especially when they are older and it takes them longer to heal...it's just best to be very careful. I think you are doing the right thing by Ivy.

Any chance you can get a pic of the "snap ecollar"? I'd love to see what it looks like. Ours are made from xray material, and fabric tape. They look like this:

 

[Melissa's ZOO]

Ivy is still in pain so I am sticking with the high dose til at least Monday. She not only has the spay incision but she has two tumor incisions so she looks like frankenstein. I will get a pic when she is up to it.

The e.collar is big twice the size of the one in the pic.(I checked the vet bill and I paid $25 for the stupid ecollar next time I will tell them I do not need one) I actually ended up cutting it down to make it not so large. I put it back on her last night and she had it off by this morning. So I am just going to leave it off. So far she is doing good and leaving her stiches alone and I am checking her constantley, good thing this is a long weekend.

I also put her back with her cagemates this morning and she seemed really happy to be back with them and ate some oatmeal. I haven't seen her eat anthing since yesterday and she refused her favorite baby cereal last night (Hawian Delight). So I was very happy when I saw her eating the oatmeal this morning.

I will take a pic of ecollar and post it on Tuesday since the camera cord is at work. I will just tape it back together so you can see what it originally looked like.

 

[jorats]

She must have been so happy when she went back with her buddies.
Lots of healing vibes for Ivy!!