BISOUS

Happy birthday to my favorite little bunny in the world! Brody turns two years old today.

BANANA!!!

Brody the bunny is still alive and well. I know I haven’t been posting about him.

Study break with Brods! #midterm #death

I took Brody to the vet yesterday. Nothing was wrong. I thought he had mites but it was just hair loss on one of his legs from a cut that healed. JEEEZ. VET BILLS for no reason, but he did completely break off one of his nails in the clinic (which the nice lady cleaned off for me) and he had a checkup. Alright then.

Stop being cute, Brody. This fluffy thing can be such a distraction…

Bun and his fur. I’m finally home to my Brody after a month of being in Europe. Oh how I’ve missed him! (This photo was taken a while ago- somewhere between the changing of seasons.. that’s when bunnies usually shed their fur for the season. It’s totally important to comb their fur so that they don’t end up getting G.I. Stasis!)

“What are you looking at?”

I miss Brody.

Classy bunny is classy.

Au revoir my little furball! About to say goodbye to Brody because I’m flying out to London early tomorrow. I’m gonna miss him, tear.

Sleeping: Brody’s favorite pastime

“I order you to pet me. NOW.”

Self-portrait with Brods

Just playing around with light!

Brody got really sick sometime in November. I went home after class around 4 to refill his bowl before heading off to campus again and noticed that he hadn’t touched his food at all. Bunnies are in the lower end of the food chain, so when they are ill, they try not to act vulnerable by disguising their illness. They start showing signs of illness when they’re really really sick. I still wasn’t sure if Brody was sick or not after the food bowl incident, so I gave him a few hours. Around 9PM, he was still hunched up in the corner, not really drinking or roaming so I knew something was off. I googled my night away in hopes of answers and I still wasn’t sure… I stumbled upon GI Stasis and decided to walk to Rite Aid to get some baby anti-gas medicine (simethicone). Read about this in several forums and found out it was okay to use for bunnies. I guess it’s a gas pain reliever. Not really sure if it worked, but I gave him some because that’s all I could do. He hadn’t pooped or peed, so I was getting really concerned. I was freaked out all night, skipped class the next morning, and got my roommate to take me to the vet as soon as possible. Luckily for me, I already took him to the vet once to get rid of worms in his poop (that’s another story, lol). The vet wasn’t quite sure if it was GI stasis or not because she didn’t feel anything hard in his stomach, but decided to give me the meds instead. After a pricey vet visit, I came out of there with a box, several syringes, needles, and a bag of sub q IV fluid. Intimidating stuff.

The vet told me I had to give Brody two shots and two IV sessions twice a day. Two in the morning, two at night— do this for a whole week. Uhhh what?  Yes. It was that serious. The vet and the assistant gave me the option of giving Brody shots or taking him to the vet everyday for this. I don’t have a car nor the funds to do this so I had no choice but to do it myself. They showed me how to do it and thought ‘why not?’. At that point I was just determined to get him better.

That night, I gave Brody his shot and IV by myself. I had to put him in the box to make him stay still. I WAS SO DETERMINED. Everything went fine, I was honestly freaked out because I hate needles and I hate the idea of hurting anyone with it. I was able to do this for the next two days, but after that I got extremely frustrated and freaked out every time I did it. I definitely asked my friends to assist me with the shots. Jeremy, my pre-med housemate, gave Brody a shot— which made Brody his first ever shot patient. Haha.

After the initial vet visit, Brody was still inactive and crunched up in one spot. I felt super bad and felt the need to supervise him carefully, so I let him stay in my room overnight. I could tell that he was in a lot of pain because when I woke up, I found him resting next to my head grinding his teeth loudly (another sign of pain). He did this for about two days. He still wasn’t pooping or eating. I took him to the vet for a follow up and it turns out that he was improving. He was drinking water and eating a little bit of hay.

I had to keep giving him sub-q fluids and in return, he started pooping— yucky watery poops. That was a good sign of improvement though. I fed him critical care through a syringe (basically mushed up pellets with extra vitamins). After a few days of that, Brody went back to normal :)

What went wrong? Seasons changed and when temperature drastically increase or decrease, bunnies shed. In this case, Brody was growing his first ever winter fur so he was shedding a lot. It was pretty intense— before he got sick, I was petting him and fur was flying everywhere. Bunnies don’t vomit so when they do consume large amounts of fur, it gets stuck in their gut. They then stop eating, drinking, pooping and they die (just read this article). If I had waited a few more hours to take him to the vet, I’m sure Brody would have died.

I wrote this entry because I like taking note of my own life events (duh) but also to hopefully share some knowledge on GI stasis to bunny owners out there. I definitely had to do a lot of google searching when this happened. Hopefully you can prevent it from happening to you! :)