I saved my rats life!

Question
This isn't exactly a question more of trying to share an experience. My rats name is mini-me b-c he looks exactly like my last baby named brain (from Pinky & the Brain). Three days ago he was barely able to breathe & couldn't stand up or walk. His eyes were full of mucus and his nose was bleeding. I didn't have the $ to take him to a vet but I googles it & saw that vets prescribed antibiotics to rats for pneumonia which is what I believed it to be. I knew that if I went to work that night my baby would not make it through the night so I called in & began nursing him back to health. I seperated him from my other rats b-c I believed he could be contagious. I had some amoxicillin lying around from a previous strep throat illness so I broke it open & mixed it together w-a minute amount of water. I sucked it up into a feeding tube and forcefed it to him 5x's a day for the 1st 3 days and have gradually worked my way down to twice daily for the past week. He has made q complete turnaround and is a brand new rat! I hope this experience can help someone in a similar situation. He is my baby & a member of my family & I hope that this helps save someone else's pet.

Answer
I am glad your rat is doing ok. Thats great news.  The chance that he had a secondary infection aside from mycoplasmosis is high, esp since he responded to amoxil.  Usually when dealing with a respiratory infection, medications from the penicillin family and other drugs do nothing to destroy the bacteria if it is myco related, and 9 times out of 10, it is. Mycoplasmosis is an organism that lacks a cell wall. Antibiotics are made to attack the cell wall. Without one, they are rendered useless and the animal continues to worsen.  Baytril and zithromax are two antibiotics that work to destroy the cell of the organism, and there are maybe two or three more that are safe to use on rats that will kill myco, and thats about it.

Now, I was NOT going to print your letter for several reasons. One reason being that it can be dangerous to dispense any medication to your small rat without knowing the mechanics of the medication.  Luckily, with rats, they can take MOST medications safely with a few exceptions. Rabbits, on the other hand, die from amoxil. It is absolutely and 100% FATAL for rabbits. If a rabbit owner was unaware of this and went head and tried to treat her rabbit without being instructed by a Veterinarian, the rabbit would have a fatal reaction and die.  

One problem with our rats and illness is the fact Vets tend to over prescribe baytril for nearly everything and the worst part is, they dont prescribe it properly, thus in turn causing the animal to develop a resistance to the drug and it wont work when needed.   This occurs when the wrong medication is used for too long and doesnt work properly and also can occur if the rat is underdosed and if the medication is not used for the proper duration.   Have you ever heard that, for example, a person is given a prescription of an antibiotic and it says to take until GONE no matter that you may feel all better?  What happens is, they take the pills for the first three days and stop because they feel totally fine, terrific, all better, you know what I mean.  There is enough pills there for at least another 5 days but they dont take them. They sit there in the back of the medictin chest, slowly expiring over time.   Say this is a rat instead of a person.  The rat has mycoplasmosis and is sneezing and coughing.  The proper treatment with this particular bacteria is baytril given twice a day   and dosed per the rats weight, which off the top of my head I believe it is to be .20 cc per lb.   It should be used for 4 to 6 weeks and if there is no response to the drug within three days, changes must be made to  avoid tolerance.  If the rat becomes ill again after recovering, baytril should be used every day for the rest of their life.   There is alot of things that need to be done properly, including dosing right and paying attention to expiration dates too.

In your case, you were lucky.   Your rat just so happened to have an infection that responding to amoxil but that isnt always the case.  
Also, I need to remind you that your rat should be on amoxil for at least a full 14 days to avoid re-infection and although I am not  sure  of the rats weight, but he should be dosed at  20cc/lb twice a day  for 14 days.

So, let me remind everyone that although I have had some Vets frown at me when I help people medicate their rats at home, and I am NOT a Vet, people WILL DO IT with our without my help, so I would much rather help make sure they are dosed properly rather than see them over dosed or under dosed, which is JUST as bad as over dosing since it can cost the rat to get sick too, which is why I help people that are determined to dose their rat at home if they have access to the proper medications. Antibiotics  also should be used ONLY if they are for the bacteria that is causing the infection.  Again, because amoxil helped your rat, this doesn't mean it will help all rats that are sick.  Amoxil is used on rats for infections caused by streps.  This drug is NOT a strong broad spectrum, which means it does not cover a large amount of organisms as some aggressive broad spectrums do. However, it is good  to prevent infection after surgery, may be used for urinary tract infections, and  is also used for secondary infections as stated earlier,  Again, it DOES NOT  attack mycoplasmosis  directly, with some cases of pneumonia it will. work well in combination with Gentocin.  Also, since I brought up gentocin, just to show you how dangerous antibiotics can be, this drug can  literally cause your rat to develop kidney disease and even lose their hearing if not used properly. Even though this is a great drug for serious and life threatening infections, the side effects can be deadly and   should never be used without the advice of a Vet. being it is so nephrotoxic.  Also please note that amoxil that is made from the powder and has to be kept in the fridge usually is the elixir that expires in 14 days and needs thrown out.   You CAN use amoxil capsules and mix the capsule with   water  to get the proper dose, but I am unsure as to what you used etc...

In closing, I am going to praise you for saving your rats life, but do need to remind people that this is NOT always the case and its not always the best thing to do unless you truly have no other options.  I always suggest to try no matter what to get to the vets before resorting to treating your rat at home no matter what.