My sweet Murray has passed, I’ve posted him and his partner Minka a few times. He was such a happy bun and my cuddle bun too and I’m just at a loss. And part of me thinks it could be my fault. Since I adopted him in January, he has had intermittent GI Stasis, likely from a bad E. Cunniculi infection and ear infection he had in February (his first health scare). Since that infection he’d get like a 1-day GI stasis scare but by the end of 24 hours he’d eat and binky around again. I took him to the vet every time and we have been trying to figure it out but everything was fine on his scans and bloodwork. Well fast forward to last week (his last episode was mid July) and I drove home to see my parents (a 4 hour drive). I’ve driven him to my parents house before and he’s been perfectly fine, he doesn’t like car rides but he tolerates them. Vet prescribed gabapentin for car rides since it’s safe and keeps em calm, so that’s exactly what I did at the same dose. He was fine at first and was his usual self but later that night wouldn’t eat greens or treats which was unusual. I quickly found an exotic vet in the area with good reviews and took him. He was discharged with critical care, inflammation meds, and e. Cunniculi meds by the end of the day. The vet said his liver levels were high but that he didn’t have liver torsion on ultrasound but she’s seen the combo of high liver levels and intermittent stasis in buns that haven’t fully cleared the EC infection. So that’s exactly night I let him hop around as usual, but he was a little lethargic because she had given him buprenorphine for pain (which is apparently normal). After that wore off, he ate a bit of hay but not enough, so I fed him his critical care which he ate happily at first but he hates ppl messing with his mouth so he started fighting me. He’s stubborn (or so I thought) so he let some of the food fall out of his mouth but if I massaged his cheeks he’d eat. The next morning he woke us up because he was coughing and his nose was dripping mucus, and I found critical care on the ground so I assumed some went in his nose. We rushed him back to the same vet and she agreed that he likely aspirated some but he went back to normal and he was fine after examination. As a precaution we asked to have him stay until 5 pm for observation and I told them they could hand feed him again. An hour later I get a call that he was fine after hand feeding, but things suddenly turned and he began regurgitating, mouth breathing and turning blue, so I gave them permission to intubate and rushed over. Things weren’t looking good but he began oxygenating better and things were looking up, so we prepared to see if he could breathe without the oxygen. She gave him deeper sedation so he wouldn’t wake up when we turned off the oxygen and anesthesia, we waited 20 minutes and tried it. He was breathing on his own then his heart stopped and we couldn’t bring him back after CPR. Devastated isn’t even the word to describe how I feel. He was only 3 or 4 and I’ve only had him 9 months and he’d been so happy. Did I do something wrong while feeding him? Should I have seen something? Has this happened to anyone else? Because the vet said she hasn’t seen a rabbit aspirate food in a long time. I miss him so much will this pain ever go away? My other bum send to be fine.
Sorry for the long message, just trying to be detailed. I added pics of my sweetie pie.
by bunluvr8