Back to the rabbit health watch. The short version is that things are generally improved but just ambiguous enough to keep inspiring second thoughts.
We think we've got his ringworm licked. This involved a bunch of medical baths, of course, none of which he liked. But he got to be more or less used to being taken into the sink and wetted down. He never got to liking it, but he got used to it. We got a bit better about drying him, though, between wringing his fur out, better toweling-off procedures, and using the hair dryer. Also we're not positive but it seems like being rinsed in warm water helped him move despite his arthritis.
With that licked, though, we noticed something white and viscous in one of his nostrils this week. It might be an infection and we've got him on an antibiotic for the suspected infection, and a probiotic to recover from the antibiotic. Rabbits are supposed to hate the taste of the antibiotic. Our pet rabbit loves it. He's a weird one. He loves the probiotic much more, and clings to it like it's the only way to save the world, but that's all right. We'll take stuff that encourages desired behavior. He has literally grabbed the probiotic pen, although that might just be a lucky swatting of his paws. But I do fear we might have reached the point where we're just trying to keep multiple issues under control, instead of ever having things settle down.
The lingering worry is that he's losing weight. He's lost about two of the eleven and a half pounds he had last September. His eating has gotten more lazy and erratic. This might reflect just that now it's harder to move he figures it's less worth the effort to get across the pen just to have some hay or boring old pellets. And sometimes he seems to lose interest midway through eating and just stops. We've been giving him smaller bits of food, more often, so that's lessened. We've also been loading him up on pumpkin and critical-care powder, but that doesn't seem to be helping him pack on weight. But the vet tech pointed out fighting off sickness takes a lot of calories, so perhaps the ringworm has been quietly chewing him up in this way. Still, we can see that his hindlegs are withering away. What was once his chunkiest part just isn't anymore. His forelegs are strong, but the hindlegs are almost a hindrance. That's not a pun, much as it seems like it ought to be.
We've had thoughts of building a wheelchair. And we're getting more serious about it. By this I mean we've mentioned it to both our dads, who are quivering with enthusiasm at the idea of building a rabbit wheelchair. My father's losing the race to actually build the thing, as he's got distance working against him. But there's a good chance much of tomorrow, in fact, is going to be devoted to a test wheelchair.
Trivia: The 1950s trans-Atlantic telephone cable was laid by the British Post Office's 8,050-ton ship Monarch. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.
Currently Reading: The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged The Past And Changed The World, Editor Jon S Friedman.
PS: Some Useful Mathematics For A Saturday Morning, which now has me thinking of someone going, ``Hey, pick me up a small bowl of mathematics, I need to do something''.