Kero the Hero

Day 1

WOW! Kero is teaching me a LOT! After an initial great weight gain he went into a serious decline with terrible diarrhoea and a complete loss of appetite. By Day 5 he was below his admission weight which was very bad indeed. I had spent the previous 3 days 'plonking' him in front of his food dishes every two hours in an effort to slow his weight loss as he was a very reluctant syringe feeder, so that was off the cards...

Day 9

In desperation on day 5, I made the decision to put him on some antibiotics in case the diarrhoea was being caused by Coccidia - a parasitic protozoan infection that can cause appetite loss/nausea, weight loss and green jelly like diarrhoea. As it was the weekend I decided I had nothing to lose because in my opinion if he kept losing at the rate he had been he would be dead within 24 hours.



The medication seemed to help and after 48 hours Kero rallied, his diarrhoea lessened and all of the nasty stuff associated with it - I don't really think you want the gory details, improved a lot as did his appetite. The next few days saw good, steady gains and I began to hope that he had turned a corner and that maybe the worst was over.

In the mean time Kero's mange had improved hugely, he was much less stinky and looked so much better - except that he was just skin stretched over bones. Poor little man.

Day 10

  On day 11 I decided to stop his antibiotics as he had had a 7 day course which is pretty standard for Coccidia and I was concerned that the medication may be causing the return of his diarrhoea which had once again hit with a vengeance. I also contacted the vet practice that had brought Hector to me, to find out how much some tests were going to cost as the time for guess work was over - we needed to try to find out exactly what was going on and I dropped a sample off later that day.

The loss trend continued on Day 12 with the amount lost jumping hugely so I decided to try giving Kero some probiotics whilst I awaited the lab results. Within 24 hours Kero had had a huge weight gain and his stools steadily improved as well which was a huge relief. He began eating like there was no tomorrow and started looking much happier and more comfortable in himself.


By Day 15 Kero looked like a completely different hoggie. His shape had rounded out quite a bit and his head wasn't looking too big for his body any more - well not quite so much anyway! The contrast with Day 10 was startling to say the least!

Day 15

 

 

 

Day 15

First thing on Day 15, I couriered a some poo samples up to Narelle so that she could run parasite tests for me. This was Kero's second sample to be tested - the first hadn't been too bad as it just showed Capillaria which his Ivomec injections and two courses of Panacur would have dealt with very efficiently.

Later that day I got a call with Kero's test results. It turns out that he is a very sick wee man indeed and it is amazing that he is still with us. His tests showed that he had both Gram +ve (bacilli & cocci) and Gram -ve (bacilli) bacterial infections as well as a yeast infection. To have both types of bacterial infection is very rare and it has been absolutely hammering his poor system - as evidenced by his symptoms to date. Turns out the probiotics were probably one of the best things I could have done for him. He's now been prescribed a new antibiotic which I'll collect tomorrow and I'll also grab a treatment from the pharmacy for his yeast infection.

Hopefully from here on it will be an unchallenged upwards curve of improvement for this little fighter. What a Champion he is!