Poor Toffee has been having a rough time of it these last few weeks. It all started one morning when I went to feed him breakfast & I noticed Toffee had a head tilt, seemed unsteady & was very quiet. Immediately I thought it could be E.Cuniculi so I administered him a dose of Panacur & painkillers.  He then had to endure the car journey to the vets.  After a thorough examination there was a shocking find; Toffee’s heart was out of rhythm. At this point it was unclear whether it was E. Cuniculi, an infection or a stroke.  A urine sample was required to test for E.Cuniculi & he was put on antibiotics as an infection could cause a heart to go out of rhythm. One of his eyes was milky & he had an ulcer on it too so eyedrops were prescribed.  Off back home we went with all his meds & a knot in my stomach.

One of my biggest concerns was his heart & the fact he was not eating as he has no weight to lose.  It was inevitable that weight was going to be lost. At 11 years old this was a big battle for Toffee. I started Toffee with all his meds & started syringe feeding him. The one big plus with Toffee is he is a very compliant fairly relaxed bunny even when he feels ill.
After almost a week of meds his urine sample finally came back with a negative result. You can get false negatives with urine samples so we added all the evidence together to determine what had happened. We think the likeliest is Toffee had a stroke.

Toffee had come on leaps & bounds. Day by day he was becoming more steady, the head tilt had gone & it was now suspected that his heart issue could have been caused by him being so ill & stressed. I think this was thought because he should have been dead by now.  A second listen to his heart by me & comparing to Apollo’s heart, I could confirm it had returned to normal. This does mean Toffee has not to be stressed as it’s likely it will return.  His eye had improved & after 4 days or so he no longer needed syringe feeding. However, I do have to feed him separately to make sure he is getting a full meal, greedy Poppy scoffs everything. His head tilt has gone & he is more or less back to his normal happy self. He is slowly gaining weight but does feel just that little bit frailer. In my experience when something like this happens they never quite get back to what they were before. It’s that slippery slope unfortunately & there is a possibility he can have another stroke at anytime.