Guess what I saw last night when I went to get Tsuri for her feeding?
I caught her climbing on the bars of the cage! This is the first time - to my knowledge - that she's had the strength in her paws to hold on to the cage bars and support her own weight - since her stroke a month ago!
She fell off when I opened the cage door - but even for her to have held on for as long as she did is very encouraging! She has developed a wheeze to her breathing...so I hope that doesn't mean she has a respiratory infection (very serious in rats and humans alike). However, the added strength is a good sign. Maybe someday she'll even be able to eat seeds again.
Plus - her hair is starting to grow back in behind her ears where she'd been obsessively cleaning so much (because of stress, or frustration) that she wore the hair off. And since she has been bruxing (grinding her teeth) the whole time, she doesn't need to have her teeth clipped. (Rats are rodents - their teeth need to be worn down because they are constantly growing. If they are sick, or there is a problem with a bite that doesn't close properly, sometimes the teeth need to be shortened, just like you would clip fingernails that get too long. It's mostly painless for the rat - but not nearly as easy as clipping fingernails since teeth are thicker and there's that little tongue that keeps getting into the wrong places).
Now all we need to do is concentrate on getting her back to her pre-stroke weight.
I'm not unrealistic. Rats rarely survive beyond 6 months after a major stroke, if they survive at all. And once they have a stroke, they're liable to have another - which is usually fatal. So for now, we are taking one day at a time and rejoicing in every little bit of progress. And along the way, Father God is teaching us all about dependency, relationship, and trust.
That's so cool.
I caught her climbing on the bars of the cage! This is the first time - to my knowledge - that she's had the strength in her paws to hold on to the cage bars and support her own weight - since her stroke a month ago!
She fell off when I opened the cage door - but even for her to have held on for as long as she did is very encouraging! She has developed a wheeze to her breathing...so I hope that doesn't mean she has a respiratory infection (very serious in rats and humans alike). However, the added strength is a good sign. Maybe someday she'll even be able to eat seeds again.
Plus - her hair is starting to grow back in behind her ears where she'd been obsessively cleaning so much (because of stress, or frustration) that she wore the hair off. And since she has been bruxing (grinding her teeth) the whole time, she doesn't need to have her teeth clipped. (Rats are rodents - their teeth need to be worn down because they are constantly growing. If they are sick, or there is a problem with a bite that doesn't close properly, sometimes the teeth need to be shortened, just like you would clip fingernails that get too long. It's mostly painless for the rat - but not nearly as easy as clipping fingernails since teeth are thicker and there's that little tongue that keeps getting into the wrong places).
Now all we need to do is concentrate on getting her back to her pre-stroke weight.
I'm not unrealistic. Rats rarely survive beyond 6 months after a major stroke, if they survive at all. And once they have a stroke, they're liable to have another - which is usually fatal. So for now, we are taking one day at a time and rejoicing in every little bit of progress. And along the way, Father God is teaching us all about dependency, relationship, and trust.
That's so cool.
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