Yesterday I decided to bring one of my girls to work with me (I work at an emergency vet hospital that typically only sees dogs and cats with the very occasional exotics). Ashton is two years old and my absolute favorite baby. A few hours in, I went on my ten minute break and brought Ashton back with me. I had a slice of pizza and gave her a piece of crust. I was on the phone at the time and didn't watch her eat it. After a few minutes, I looked down at her cuz I felt her wheezing, which she has never ever done. Then she started to push her head back and her ears went down...almost like she was trying to regurgitate (at the time, I thought that rats cannot regurgitate. I found out later that rats
can regurgitate but are not able to vomit).
I immediately went back to the treatment room, grabbed a vet I knew to know the most about rats (which, sadly, isn't saying much), and told her that my rat was choking. Of course, the vet said, "She looks fine to me!" Um, no. She was choking. Sorry, doctor, that it looks different than dogs, but this is a rat choking (although I personally had never seen a rat choke, but come on, I knew what was going on).
So once she really started displaying signs of choking, they immediately started suction on her and put her on oxygen. Ok, literally, she almost died. They had to bring the crash cart over and everything. I can't even tell you how freaked out I was; sobbing, shaking, the whole bit. After a few minutes of suction and all that good stuff, they finally got everything they could out and we put her in an oxygen tank. She was still breathing pretty hard, but at least it wasn't open-mouthed breathing anymore.
A couple hours later, we nebulized her (if you don't know, basically putting evaporated saline into her box for about five minutes). She did ten times better after that. Then we did x-rays, which confirmed that she aspirated into her lungs. So basically my little girl gave herself respiratory. Ugh. She's always been in such perfect health and she has to go and do something stupid like this.
It's a good thing I work at a vet hospital and it happened while I was at work.
So, in the end, Ashton is doing better but is still not 100%. I have to keep her separated from the other girls in a super clean cage, meaning I have to clean it every time she makes waste to avoid any ammonia buildup which could apparently send her over the edge. They also gave me zithromax to give her orally twice daily, plus I need to nebulize her myself a few times a day. I'm going to buy a humidifier, but for today I'm carefully using the steam from a tea kettle.
I also just found her sneezing out some brownish blood, so I know it's not just mucousy sneezing. It's got to be from her lungs.
My poor girl. :(
So the moral of the story is.... DON'T FEED YOUR RATS PIZZA CRUSTS!!!
