I don't bite wink wink!
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker!
Ya gott love a woman like that...
We are here for you though... as evidenced by all the responses you've received already. I would've been on earlier except we've been having our own little drama at the ponzi house tonight.
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uh-oh... afraid to ask..but I will.. what happened?
<sigh>
I can't be anymore blunt here. I wrote down what happened below before I wrote this... and it's depressing. If you read it, you'll probably figure out that I was pretty upset.
If you want to know what was going on, just read up to the break (...................) and skip to the last line. If you do decide you want to read the whole thing, fair warning, it's not a happy tale. Not
I repeat NOT for children.
Here goes.
About 4 months ago, Elle's pet hamster, Tiny, died. It had lived a fairly long life for a hamster (about 4 years I think?). He was quite the remarkable little guy. He'd sit for a long time and just watch TV or crawl inside a pocket and have a nap. A really nice animal.
Natch, when he died, Elle was quite upset. After a few weeks (I think) Elle decided to buy a Guinea Pig. She didn't want to get another hamster because she felt it would be like trying to 'replace' Tiny.
So she got herself a Guinea Pig and he seemed to be a pretty good Pig. But then after a couple of months or so, he suddenly died too. She was really upset this time, maybe even more so then previously.
How do you answer your child when she asks, "Why me? What did I do wrong?"
Heartbreaking.
First week of January she's at the pet store and sees a rescue hamster and falls in love, again. She buys him.
..................................................
So last night we got home around 10pm. I'm exhausted because I haven't slept too well last couple of nights and I'm looking forward to a good night's rest.
Elle screams and starts calling for me (I was in the basement, putting something away).
"My hamster's dead! My hamster's dead!"
She's holding the lifeless hamster in her hand.
I take the hamster from her and notice a leg spasm. I figure it's just a reflex and don't say anything. I don't want her to think that it's alive, just because it twitched.
So what am I going to do with this? I can't just toss it in the trash, for obvious reasons.
Kay mentions that she might have a shoebox... she can't find it.
I take the hamster in the kitchen and decide to wrap it temporarily in paper towels. I drop the hamster onto the paper towel and it sort of stretches it's legs out momentarily.
What the heck?
I stare at the hamster for a bit and after about 10 seconds it draws a deep breath.
Oh, carp... it's not dead yet. What do I do?
Ruby comes around the corner and sees me staring at the hamster.
"What are you doing?"
I whisper, "It's not dead yet!"
Ruby asks, "Should we tell Elle?"
How could we keep it a secret? Should we?
Elle comes around the corner and wants to know what's going on. We tell her.
While Ruby and Elle are checking out the hamster, I quickly do some Google searches. I find that it's possible for hamsters to go into a torpor. Similar to a hibernation. Except if they're not brought around they'll die. It usually happens when the temperature is less than 15C/60F but not normally until the temp drops to about 5C/40F.
Well he somehow got into his exercise ball and he was wet... so maybe he got in the ball, peed, got wet, got cold and...
So the web page I'm reading says to warm the hamster by placing it on some towels over a heating pad while rubbing it vigorously.
So I start doing that starting around 11:30pm. I wasn't really hopeful and figured that the hamster would die soon.
After 30 minutes or so, there didn't seem to be much change. The web site said that if there was no change in 30 - 60 minutes to go to a vet. Well, we didn't want to go to a vet and pay $300 just for the vet to say, "Yes he's dying."
Elle says, "Daddy, he's breathing more, isn't he?"
I didn't want to give her any false hope so I told her I didn't think so. I timed the breaths and they were about 6 seconds apart.
Wait, that's better then before isn't it?
I keep working on the hamster and after another 20 minutes or so the breaths are about 3 seconds apart.
A while later, his mouth moved a bit and I was able to get some light sugar water in him.
Eventually he started twitching motions.
By 1am he was able to stand with some support and even ate a little bit.
Around 1:30am I sent Elle to bed. She was over the moon with happiness.
By 2am I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. If I left him for a couple of seconds, he'd drop his head and seem to fall asleep. If I picked him up and bugged him, he'd move around and only appear a little uncoordinated.
At 3am I followed the web's (and the vet's - I called an emergency vet around 2am) instructions and let him finish his recovery in his cage.
He explored his cage a little and settled in with his head down again. I watched him for a while and his breathing seemed good and he'd chew or shake himself once in a while.
I went to bed around 3:30.
At 6am I got up to check on him and he was back to square one.
Breaths every 12 seconds or so.
We decided to take him back to the pet store where we got him (there's a vet there) when it opened up.
When I'm home, I drive the girls to school at 8. Elle had a spare from 9:45 - 11:00. We decide that I'll take Elle to school, pick her up at 9:45 and go to the vet.
I went to lie down for a few minutes while everyone got ready to go. I went to check on the hamster and Elle already had him out on the heating pad and was trying to warm him.
By 8 he was dead.
awwwwww mannnn feel better soon.
But, he went from hurting so much he was crying to all better so it was money well spent. Get better fast!
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