guinea pig with weird problem.

Question
Hello,

I have a guinea pig who has a problem that is hard finding what her problem is. We are leaning towards cushing's disease and mange mites, and possibly  I have brought her to the vet and I am not sure, but I think I remember the skin culture test turned out positive for something. I stopped going to the vet because they kept trying to reel me in for money.

I will include a link near the end of this post, that leads to all the forum posts along with included pictures of the hairloss. She had a history of hairloss on her rear end and she squeaked when urinating. We treated it with monistat 7 and she became better and normal again and very healthy after 1-3 months I believe, if I remember correctly. This occurred right after her daughter passed away, who had lost weight and had hairloss under her, around her stomach area and spreading up the bottom of her body.

2 years later, she had hairloss again, this time on the back of her trunk. She did not lose weight, just hairloss around her trunk and spreading up, slowly. This started in December and 5 months later it is worse. She has now lost weight and she seems to have a yellow color on the hairs of her rear end, since a few days ago. It also smells. I believe this is diarreah and might be because we gave her too much of the probiotic. She drinks more often. She still eats by herself. I fed her today an hour of hay. I saw her go to her pellet bowl by herself to eat. I see her squeak for 5-10 seconds and her back sorta raises a bit as if she has pain. I believe I also saw her rear end seem to sorta open up. Then, she curls up and seems to scratch her rear end area or bite it. Sometimes after this process, she goes to drink water for 10-15 seconds. When the problem started she always curled up to scratch/bite herself there, but she never raised her back a bit as if she has pain or went to drink a lot of water.

http://www.guinealynx.info/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2101838#2101838

The link includes every information and pictures.

Thank you so much for any answer you may give. I really appreciate all the help I can get. I just hope she gets better.

Answer
pff this is a challenge.

first and foremost i have to recommend finding another vet, i can totally get not wanting to be fleeced for money and I agree with you on your choice to leave them, but a vet is always going to be able to deliver a better verdict than me.

If im honest I dont fully know what you are dealing with, the hair loss sounds like a skin condition, something like ecsma in humans that kicks in when the animal if at a low point already, which means that the hair loss is not something you need to worry about right away.

what concerns me is the runny poop, scratching the rear and yellow tinging in the fur,

their is only one thing that I can think to assist, an antibiotic treatment for a slightly prolonged period, something like ivmec for about three weeks. hopefully this would flush out whatever is wrong with her be it some internal infection, bowl illness or just a general run downed body.

but...
I want to stress that this is not a fool proof treatment, there is a chance that using this might make her condition worse depending on what it is that is causing her illness in the first place, but if i was stuck in a position where i had to treat her myself without a vets help then this is what I would do.
i would also feed her carrots these help them to gain weight back quickly.

all the best