Poor Bear, too young for such a thing to happen in his life. Kailan took him in as a youth from the adopt section of her petstore, along with his brother Bruce...returned for who knows what reason, and he lived very very happily with her and his band of brothers until November, when his life changed forever.
Kailan posted videos of Bear asking what he was doing and we realized he was having seizure activity. She managed to get him to a vet who only gave him chlorpalm but his seizures seemed to stop soon after.
Then before Christmas they started up again and were much worse, plus she was dealing with a lot of other sick rats. I offered to take in Bruce and Bear and try to get him treatment for his seizures. I met them on Dec. 27th when Kailan tearfully dropped off her wonderful boys to my mom's place after Christmas.
At my moms
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Bruce and Bear came home and were put in a small cage behind my chair at my computer so I could observe them all the time, and start up my seizure log. I had to make it as safe a place for poor Bear so he didn't knock his head on a hard dish or a ramp. Bruce was good with his brother for the most part, but he had his moments where he seemed confused and upset and would pin his brother down during a seizure, and it would scare the bejeezus out of poor Bear. Sometimes after a seizure Bear would get overly dominant and would try to pin and powergroom and even hump his bigger brother and Bruce would just take it.
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His seizures started off relatively mild, and very much the same each time. He would stiffen, his left paw would go up in the air, he would fall over and seize, then rear up, moving his mouth, bat the air with one or both paws, then fall over and then it was done. Pre-seizure he was agitated and would often rear up on the sides...post-seizure he was quiet for a short time, then hyper aware of everything, every sound, every movement...he was barely touchable and would bolt like an unsocialized petstore baby rat.
He also would eat and drink like crazy for awhile then he would relax and sleep, and it would start again. Initially his seizures were maybe a few times a day in the hours i was home. I sent an email to my vet with the videos that Kailan took and all the description I could on the friday morning.My vet was out of town but I managed to get him in on Tues., January 5th after a terrifying weekend where he literally just kept seizing and I lost poor previously starved Noor to a bout of cluster seizures that went on non-stop for 8 hours. My vet didn't look at the videos and emailed description of Bear's seizure activity until just before 4:30 and his exam. By then my guess is he was highly agitated, post-ictal, and very scared at the vet clinic, so when they tried to pick him up to examine him he freaked out and his latent URI got really bad to the point where he was gasping. He was put in oxygen with his brother, and observed until I got there to pick him up. They said they saw no sign of seizures but were willing to order the phenobarbital that I asked for anyways. They wanted to keep him overnight and then x-ray his lungs in the morning, but I went and took him home...I knew the URI flareup was all stress and when we got home, he was soooo happy to be there. Gave me my first Bear kisses.
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Thus began the roller coaster with Bear and I. His seizures got very bad, and I had to keep increasing his dose of phenobarbital to control it, I also put him on melatonin to help his seizures...then it seemed to be working...relief.
It was about this time that Bruce decided he wasn't going to let his brother live with him anymore and would attack him if he was put back in his cage, so Bear joined my oldies on the bed.
He loooved old Sully, and seemed to really need the quiet calm energy of old rats whereas his brother would rile him up.
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Sully sadly passed soon after and Bear didn't want another friend, but I pulled out old formerly fear aggressive (to rats) Riley and Riley decided Bear was going to be his bestie and HE had no choice in the matter. At first Bear rebuffed Riley's friendly advances...then he had his first seizure with Riley there, and Riley just stood there while he was getting whapped in the face with flailing paws. Then he did something I will never forget...he actually pushed his head under Bear's whapping paws and under his head and pushed him back onto his feet...then crawled up beside him and cuddled next to him worried about his new friend.
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He even let Bear rest his head on him, and it was obviously terrifying to poor old Riley as this is when he would get attacked, and he knew it...his eyes were wide and scared but when Bear didn't attack him, he slowly calmed down and actually went to sleep....
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He seemed to improve by all the gentle loving of his new friend.
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Then Cheer joined the love-fest and she would lie on Bear as he had seizures until he flipped her off, she was soo kind, yet another rat that used to attack first, and ask questions later. He really loved this old girl.
Of course then it got worse and we then had to put him on potassium bromide, and in a few days this seemed to be working as well...but it wasn't. He started exhibiting neuro symptoms which made me suspect that he might have a brain tumour. On his last weekend, he had a stroke like event. The seizures thankfully stopped but Bear was done. I knew our fight was almost over and was planning on taking him in first thing on Tuesday morning (it was a long weekend) to have him put to sleep.
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On Tuesday morning at 4:45 am, Bear dragged himself out of the carrier, and was bumping his nose into my side. I picked him up and got a lovely 5 minutes of cuddling on my chest before he got restless and wanted down. I helped him slither down and he sledged on his belly over to his first elderly girlfriend Cheer, whom he adored. He lay down on his side and she cuddled up behind him, and put her head over his back, like he did so many times with her. I realized a couple of minutes later that he had stopped breathing and was gone.
Bear using Cheer's back as his pillow...
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