How I almost lost my bunny

     I haven't been on social media much this week, but it's been a really bad week. I thought I was going to lose Maddie, but thankfully, it seems like she's going to be okay.
     She stopped eating Tuesday night, but I really didn't notice until Wednesday. There are a few reasons why bunnies don't eat, even things that they normally love. They are finicky, as bad as cats. They sometimes decide that they don't want certain foods. Sometimes they go fill up on hay and you don't notice. Sometimes they're just weird.
     Many times though, it is a sign that something is wrong. It could just be gas, or it could be their teeth bothering them, or it could be something much more serious like a blockage or worse. Often when a bunny stops eating, they are dead within a couple of days, if they make it that long. Bunnies have a complex digestive system, and when a bunny stops eating, their gut can shut down within 24 hours. It’s called GI stasis, and it is one of the leading causes of death for bunnies. By Wednesday afternoon, I was getting very worried. I haven’t had any experience with GI stasis with either of my bunnies in fifteen years. I was lucky, I guess.
     Maddie was not acting that strangely, other than not being interested in food, no matter what I offered her. I tried massaging her belly to see if that helped, but nothing changed. She had also stopped pooping, which is a very bad sign.
     Now normally, I would take her to the vet right away. The problem with that is Pennsylvania’s unemployment insurance program is in complete disarray right now, partly because PA Republicans took away most of their funding years ago to make it harder for people to collect. They have a small workforce, and you can never get a hold of anyone on the phone or email. I have used a redialer app on my phone, and it redialed over 200 times and only ever got a busy signal. The main reason they are having trouble getting people their money is because Trump delayed signing the relief bill until after the cutoff date for the CARES act, and all that information and programming has to be redone.
     At any rate, what it meant was that I had no money to take Maddie to the vet. I mean, I have no money whatsoever. My bank account is currently overdrawn and getting hit with fees everyday. By Thursday morning, I was a mess, and my parents offered to pay for the vet, but they don’t have much money right now either. I explained to them that rabbits are exotics, and just taking her there could quickly add up to thousands of dollars. They would need to do x-rays right off the bat, probably keep her overnight, and if it was anything more serious than gas, it would quickly add up. Still, I figured just getting her there would be better than nothing, even if I couldn’t afford much treatment.
     Well, it turns out that my rabbit vet retired, and they have no one there who could help, because most vets know nothing about rabbits at all. I had thought I could make some kind of arrangement with them seeing as my family and I had been going there for decades, but we couldn’t even get in the door. Worse still, after a bunch of calls, I soon found out that the nearest vet who would take a rabbit was almost two hours away in Trenton, NJ! They would demand payment up front, and it would be an emergency visit with an exorbitant fee added on. I barely had enough gas in my car to get to my local vet, let alone New Jersey!
     It was then that I started to accept the fact that Maddie was going to die. When bunnies go into stasis, there are things you can do. Many bunny owners keep an emergency kit for it. One of the things they have is Metacam, which is a pain reliever. Bunnies in pain don’t eat, but if you can relieve the pain, they will start eating again. Trouble is, Metacam is prescription, and it’s illegal for a vet to prescribe it without seeing the animal, so we were back at square one. The other thing you keep in an emergency kit for buns is Critical Care, which is basically ground up pellets you mix with water and force feed to them. The thing is, if she had a blockage, force feeding her would be bad, so I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to do.
     Then I started thinking really hard about what would make her tummy ache. I suddenly remembered that on Tuesday for lunch I had made a salad, and I was left with a big broccoli stalk. I threw it on Maddie’s treat dish, thinking she would nibble on it a little and I would wind up throwing most of it away. That’s what usually happened. I realized that she had eaten the whole thing! She’s not used to that much broccoli. In the past, I only ever gave her a floret or two now and then. I realized then that she most likely had gas, and it was causing her discomfort.
     The other thing that people keep in their emergency kits is gas drops, the kind you give to infants. So I ran up to my parent’s house, borrowed 10 dollars, and headed to the drugstore. You have to use a syringe to get the liquid in their mouths, and rabbits do not like that process one little bit. Especially Maddie. She hates when you have your hands anywhere near her chin or mouth, she is a prey animal. So the rest of Thursday was spent battling Maddie to get doses of the gas drops in her. More of it ran down her chin than got in her mouth, I’m afraid. The end result was that it had no effect at all. It wasn’t working.
     Friday afternoon, I contacted the vet to see if they could put her down. I couldn’t afford or even access any treatment for her, and I didn’t want her to suffer. At this point, she hadn’t eaten in three days, and rabbits very rarely make it that long without dying. She didn’t seem like she was in any kind of excruciating pain, but she definitely wasn’t comfortable. She was spending most of her time under the dining room table, hiding away like most animals do if they are sick or dying. She was also hiding from me, because she was scared I was going to try to force gas drops in her. She kept shifting her position, because she couldn’t get comfortable. She was starving to death on top of everything else. It was killing me that I couldn’t help her, and I spent much of this week sobbing uncontrollably.
     Then I thought of when I had to put my first rabbit, Tampa, to sleep. There were no rabbit vets on duty that evening, but he was suffering. He had cancer, because that day he had suddenly stopped eating and was going downhill quickly. He was ten years old, and when I picked him up, I was shocked that he weighed almost nothing. So I took him to the vet, and they looked at him and confirmed that he was not going to live long, and I should put him down. The thing is, the vet on duty wasn’t a rabbit vet, so he took Tampa into another room, and it was some 25 minutes later that they brought his body out. They had trouble finding a vein, and ultimately had to inject him directly in the heart. I didn’t want to think about how much he suffered in that 25 minutes until they finally got it done.
     I didn’t want Maddie to go through that. She hadn’t moved from under the table almost all day, so I figured she wouldn’t even last until morning. I thought that maybe she would be better off just dying quietly at home, and who knows, maybe there was a miracle out there. I was due. I decided to hold off until Saturday at least.
     I hardly slept that night, checking on her constantly and trying in vain to get her to eat. I finally fell asleep around four, and I woke up about 8am and went to check on her, expecting her to be dead. To my surprise, she wasn’t. At that moment, I decided that I was going to try everything I could. I got the gas drops again, and forced the maximum dosage in her. This time, I got it all in. I went and ground up pellets and made my own critical care. I figured at this point, force feeding her couldn’t make it much worse. It turned out that I didn’t have a syringe big enough, so I ran to the pet store with my last five dollars to buy one, but they were opening later than usual due to covid. Okay, no problem, I still had to give her more gas drops anyway, I would just go back later.
     Well, Maddie had had enough of gas drops. She wouldn’t let me near her, and when I would finally catch her, she would fight tooth and nail to get away. I was all scratched up, and still no more drops were in her. I tried wrapping her in a blanket, and even that wouldn’t hold her. She took off under the table again, and I felt defeated. She was going to die after all.
     A little while later, I thought I heard the sound of gnawing. Maddie hadn’t even bothered to chew on anything the past few days, and chewing was her favorite pastime! I walked over and saw that she was chewing on my old sneaker, and when she saw me, she hopped out from under the table. She was sniffing around, and acting more like Maddie. I went over to her, and she took off under the table again, afraid of the drops. For the hell of it, I went and got her fresh vegetables to see if she would eat, even though I knew she wouldn’t. I was crying as I got under the table, and I told her how much I loved her and put the veggies by her and begged her to eat.
     And she did!
     She didn’t eat a lot of them, but this was the first time she ate anything in over 4 days! It did seem like a miracle. The only thing is, her gut had definitely shut down, and it can be really hard getting it started again. It was encouraging, but I knew we were a long way off from a full recovery. She needed to poop as well as eat, to make sure that the whole system was working. I fed her some more veggies a little bit later. The gas drops seemed to work, but her poor tummy must still have felt bad, because she wasn’t wolfing them down like a starving bunny should.
     A little while later, she hopped over to her litter box, and sat in there for a while. I hoped she was pooping, but you can never tell. It was excruciating, because she was taking her own sweet time about it, and I didn’t want to go near her in case she would run off again. About ten minutes later, she left the box, and I ran over, hoping to see poops. Low and behold, there they were! They were small, and a little runny, but it was something!
     So for the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday, I was seeing encouraging signs. Maddie still didn’t want snacks, and still didn’t want to eat a lot, but she did make another small poop twice. She still wasn’t being Maddie, and I was nervous. Even bunnies who go through stasis and start eating will die anyway.
     She slept under the table again last night, and this morning I gave her more veggies, and she ate nearly all of them. So I went over to the kitchen doorway where I usually give her treats and breakfast banana, and she ran over and begged! Still, she wouldn’t eat any treats or banana I tried to give her. I got more veggies and went to put them in her cage, and she ran like a shot to the cage, all excited. Still, she just walked away without eating anything. It was frustrating and maddening. Maybe she wasn’t getting better after all.
     About 20 minutes later, she was under the coffee table, in her usual spot, something she hadn’t done since Tuesday. She looked up at me, so I picked up the treat container I keep by the couch and shook it, and she jumped up in my lap! She went crazy eating some treats, and then jumped down and headed for the litter box. When she left, I checked, and there were some normal sized poops! She plopped down on the floor, comfortable and seemingly satisfied.
     Since then, she has been acting like my Maddie girl. She is investigating, chewing on all kinds of things, even picking at her hay. She is going to make it, and I can’t believe it because all the odds were against her. Who knows, maybe prayers work, because my friends and family who knew what was happening were praying hard and hoping against hope that she would be okay. My family was probably hoping that I would be okay as well, because if I lost Maddie right now, with everything else going on, I don’t know what I would do. I wouldn’t kill myself, but I would probably just give up.
     Or I wouldn’t. This period right now is a huge test of my whole positive outlook, because there is a lot of stuff going on that isn’t very positive at all. I guess that’s what hope and faith are about, holding onto to them when it’s hardest. I would go on if something happened to Maddie. I wouldn’t get another bunny right away, but I was already thinking about how I could maybe volunteer at a local shelter or rescue if possible. I will probably still go do that. I still remember that my friends love me and they care; about me and my bunny. I even made a new friend who helped me with some of the stasis stuff, and it helped to talk to another bunny person about everything I was dealing with, so thank you so much Jessica, and thank you Heather for putting me in touch with her! All I know is that I still have my beautiful Maddie girl, so I will get through this other stuff as well.