Real Life Case: Serious
Cut (Blood Loss, Shock)
Sufferer: Meka, doe, 19 months
Both Meka and her sister are very active does that love playing with the toys in their tank and climbing, which they are both especially adept at. One morning we noticed that Meka was not her usual active self, but acting a little strange by just sitting in a corner of the tank and not running around as usual. When we took her out to have a look to see what was wrong, we could not see much at first. She was not sniffling, sneezing or dirty at the back end. Neither was her coat separating or standing apart. When I felt underneath her I felt a small matt in her fur and lifted her up again to get a closer look.
To my dismay I saw that she had fairly fresh blood on her fur that had caused it to mat like this. I immediately wiped it clean with some cotton wool buds soaked in warm water and checked to see if I could see a wound underneath the fur. However, Meka and her sister both have astrex somewhere in their genes and have long thick fur, which made it hard to see any injury. I rang the vet (it was a Saturday and they were not open for appointments) for some advice.
I was told that the best thing to do was get some cotton wool with cold water on and hold that over the wound to close the edges together – I suppose on a mouse this would count as applying pressure as you do in human first aid. The other important thing was to keep her warm as in the treatment for shock, since we don’t know how much blood she lost. The amount of blood was fairly large for a small mouse (she’s only about 23g) so we had to just hope she would be ok. She was very pale on her pink skin (feet and hands and half her tail – the other half is grey) so I suppose that was a good indicator of how well she was – when she pinked up we knew she was getting better.
I also made sure that Meka had plenty of food – a little higher
fat than normal as well as her favourite (cooked soya beans) and some
cucumber so that she wouldn’t dehydrate. I also added extra vitamins
to her water to help her fight any infection that may have begun in the
wound and to generally boost her immune system and health. A few days
of solitary confinement later and she was well enough to go back into
the big tank with the others, who accepted her back straight away. We
still don’t know how she received the wound in the first place –
the mice don’t fight and the only thing we can think of is that
she might have fell from a toy or onto a toy (she climbs on the roof mesh).
Whatever happened, we know that the tank is as safe as it can be and I
think I will always remain puzzled, but extremely glad that Meka showed
the strength she did in recovering.
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