Poll: Veterinary alternative medicine
Dec. 13th, 2004 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jim_pSo I managed to snag an appointment and take Mickey the rabbit to the vet today. This guy is awesome. He keeps his patient histories online, and takes a digipic every time they come in. This way, in addition to the rest of the history, any visual changes are obvious.
After poking and prodding the bunny for a bit, we decide to take an X-ray. What it showed was that the poor bun has severe scoliosis, which produced a shift in the spinal column that's pinching the spinal cord. This means that his stiffness is probably less about arthritis than about paralysis. I'm kicking myself ever so slightly, because we opted not to spring for the X-ray a year ago when this first showed up. If we'd caught it back then we probably could have managed it much better and he wouldn't be nearly so bad off today [/guilt].
In any case, with an injury like this the treatment options would be surgery, chiropractic, or accupuncture. Surgery is Right Out for a bun this old. So the question is, which would be more likely to restore at least partial function to his three currently-useless limbs? The doctor determined that they have a lot more range of motion than he's exhibiting, so the problem is primarily neurological; the arthritis is a relatively minor component (hey, maybe all that expensive Cosequin I've been feeding him has in fact been working!)
So who would probably do best for my bunbun... chiropractor or accupuncturist?
After poking and prodding the bunny for a bit, we decide to take an X-ray. What it showed was that the poor bun has severe scoliosis, which produced a shift in the spinal column that's pinching the spinal cord. This means that his stiffness is probably less about arthritis than about paralysis. I'm kicking myself ever so slightly, because we opted not to spring for the X-ray a year ago when this first showed up. If we'd caught it back then we probably could have managed it much better and he wouldn't be nearly so bad off today [/guilt].
In any case, with an injury like this the treatment options would be surgery, chiropractic, or accupuncture. Surgery is Right Out for a bun this old. So the question is, which would be more likely to restore at least partial function to his three currently-useless limbs? The doctor determined that they have a lot more range of motion than he's exhibiting, so the problem is primarily neurological; the arthritis is a relatively minor component (hey, maybe all that expensive Cosequin I've been feeding him has in fact been working!)
So who would probably do best for my bunbun... chiropractor or accupuncturist?
