pip died very suddenly =[

Question
i wish i could tell you the exact kind of hamster i have, but i cant.. im sorry =[
also, i did lose track of time since i got pip, so im not sure of her age, but i know for sure that she did not live a full hamster's life span.
also, let me start by saying that we had 2 hamsters in the same cage, choncho and pip, and pip always had a mean streak. because of this, we rarely took her out of the cage or she would bite us. oh, and pip also liked to climb to the top of the cage.. so she fell a lot. i thought maybe that was the cause, a broken bone, but i didnt understand why she went through the things she went though before she died.
so one morning, i noticed that pip wasnt really moving. my brother thought she was dead, but after nudging her a bit she started moving again. this went on and on. she kept going completely motionless. i knew she was probably sick, but sadly, my mom wouldnt support or pay for a visit to the vet for a hamster. i put her next to her food bowl and saw that she ate a little, so i left the hamsters alone and left for the day. later that night, my mom also said that pip had died. when i checked to see, she was still alive, but barely moving, and her heart was beating faster than normal. i took her into my room away from choncho and put her in a little box and watched her. i petted her and rubbed her belly and tried to make her comfortable. after a while, i left. when i came back, i noticed she had pushed aside all the bedding id put her and was in the middle of the box laying on her side. she was breathing quick, short breaths. when i touched her, she stretched all the way out and opened her mouth.. i could tell she was in serious pain. i stopped touching her completely. oh, her back was really arched. forgot to mention that. anyway, after a little while, she kept stretching out and opening her mouth in little intervals. i watched her do that for a little while... i was pretty much crying by then. i could hear little painful releases of breath every time she'd flex. then she finally froze competely stiff for a while, and i thought she was dead. but then she unfroze and started flailing her little arms around. she moved around for a while before she finally died. id say she was probably suffering for a good 12 hours, but the actual time it took for her to die... she kept on having little painful moment for about an hour id say. i felt terrible. does this sound like anything specific? is it something i could have prevented? because i do still have choncho, and i would like very much to prevent this terrible death from happening to her.
thanks so much, and sorry its so long =/

Answer
Hello Lauren,
thanks for all the details. The way you are describing things it sounds like she was having seizures up until she died. Did she have a wet tail or diarrhea? If so she probably died because of the disease wettail that hamsters normally get. There's nothing that can be done to prevent it.
If she wasn't having diarhea than there are many possible causes. It could be that something inside her ruptured and was causing severe pain and seizures or a bacterial infection. It would be really hard to figure out what exactly happaned. I am so sorry for your loss but i truly doubt that there was anything that you could do without a vets help and there was nothing you can do to prevent it.