Post upper respitory infection in my rat

Question
Hello,
I have a rat who recently got sick about 1 wk and 3 days ago. When his illness came on I noticed he started to lean to the right side of his body. He was walking around in circles it seemed. About a day later he stopped eating and drinking completely. He wouldn't touch a thing. I took him to the vet after 2 or 3 days of this as he started to secret a red mucous around his nose. She informed me he had an upper respitory infection and said he was EXTREMELY sick. She injected him with anti-biotics and saline/electrolytes and he immediently purked up, (but no too much) He was quite still for the next 4 days or so as I gave him his anti-bx and nutri sludge and then this last Friday he became ravenous wanting to eat EVERYTHING. He's going through bottles of baby food (which I have mixed with crushed rat pellets for higher caloric intake). HOWEVER, he's still leaving on his right side HEAVILY and he doesn't seem to be improving at all. He has to be fed via syringe or else he can eat. I have to feed him every 3 hours or so. Im not sure if this is due to bring inflamation from his infection or not?? It's very strange. I see he's definitly improving. He's spinning around and around trying to regain his feet, but never does. Please let me know what you think the problem is. Thanks very much.  

Answer
He needs to regain the weight he lost, so his body is telling him he's hungry all the time - that's a good thing! The spinning is rather common with a severe infection. Sometimes after an infection hits the brain stem it causes permanent wry-neck. While rats will recover from the initial infection, they'll always have that head tilt and balance issue. If he continues to spin, that isn't a good thing - hopefully soon he'll regain some of his balance and recover enough to be able to function as a normal rat.