Could it be a stroke?

Question
QUESTION: Hello.  I have been reading your answers to others and you really seem to have a handle on rattie health.
On Thursday my 8 month old hooded rat suddenly twisted to one side and seemed to loose the use of her front paw. It lasted only a few moments and happened again later in the day but otherwise she was fine. On Friday she was her normal energetic self. She gets lots of people time and on Friday evening she was enjoying sitting up on my shoulder and going back and forth between my husband and me, she was her normal self. On Saturday she seemed to have had a major stroke. She cannot walk, she sort of dragged herself at first and now cannot move about, drink or feed herself. I have been giving her what I can to keep her hydrated but I fear she has very little time left. She now has a red discharge around her eyes and appears to be very labored in her breathing.She is limp and pretty much helpless at this point. It is quite heartbreaking and I would like to figure out if I could have done something to prevent this. I have another rat of the same age and although from a different litter. They enjoy a huge cage that is cleaned very regularly I have always used aspen as bedding and they are fed lab blocks to make sure they get proper nutrition. They get fresh water daily. Could this have been a genetic defect? Is it possible that it was an ear infection and that I did not react soon enough.
Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you  Jill

ANSWER: I am really sorry this has happened to her. She is SO young.
I doubt it is a stroke. It does sound neurological in nature but her age is telling me otherwise.
Usually in younger rats it is often a brain tumor, a brain abscess or infection of the area of the brain that controls motor skills and over a short period of time it progresses further as you are seeing now.
It could be Encephalitis or Meningococcal encephalitis. This controls breathing and the whole 9 yards. Her treatment would be aggressive including antibiotics both oral and IV depending on the Vet and what he or she is equipped with. An IV takes a tiny needle (30 gage) and a very sedate rat but it works rapidly in serious cases. She would also need steroids for any inflammation and probably fluids given subcutaneously and also pain medication. In other words, this little girl would need critical care by a very qualified vet. I am afraid a traditional vet would suggest euthanasia while an exotic vet may try everything possible to try to bring her out of this if possible. I had two rats with similar symptoms. One passed on his own, the other recovered but lost his vision but he is doing very well despite this handicap mainly because rats do not rely heavily on their vision to get around. He is still unsteady on his feet and it mocks an ear infection and heat tilt to a degree since he walks in circles. I doubt she had an inner ear infection that went unnoticed. They usually let you know whats going on by head tilt, itching of the ear, puling the ear, loss of balance and even an odor or discharge from the ear PLUS it would need to go untreated a long time before it would travel to the brain and cause these major symptoms. My two rats that had this were brothers but it is unclear if it was genetic or not. It is highly possible.  I do think that if treatment is impossible, euthanasia is the kindest action because this will not go away without aggressive treatment and even then, I cant tell you for sure if she would respond or not. I have sen this alot and its heartbreaking. If you need names of any exotic vet in your area, please let me know and I can find one for you right away..at least I hope I can find one close enough. Sometimes you have to drive an hour to get to one which is just so sad. I wish more vets would take the continuing education needed to become exotic certified. We need them, badly!
I wish I could help, but I will tell you that you take excellent care of your girls from the description you gave me and you have done nothing wrong to cause this at all, and there is NO prevention from something like this, either. Its just something our rats get, but its not as common as other ailments are such as mycoplasmosis, mammary tumors or kidney disease. Hang in there!



REVISED
I made a grave error. I said with treatment, euthanasia is the kindest action and I meant to say WITHOUT treatment. Obviously I would go for treatment first to see what it is or if there is any response before letting her go unless she choses to go on her own. :0(

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Wow that was an amazingly quick response.

Since writing to you I have seen some green pus way down in her ear, which I have been able to remove. I then cleansed her her with warm salt water. It did not have an odor(the green stuff). She has responded to a degree. Her breathing is better and she actually ate a small piece of roast chicken since she does not seem to have the strength to try to chew on her harder normal food. I am still trying to get her to drink and if she doesn't want it she is actually putting up a little fight.
Her strength seems a little better but if I put her down her back legs splay forward and if she tries to move she just kind of flounders. She does not appear to be in pain. I will be contacting my vet first thing in the morning.
Thank you so much for all the information you provided. If you have any additional thoughts I would be grateful to hear them.
Once again Thank You
Jill

Answer
First of all, forgive my spelling. It seems my computer keyboard has decided to go on the fritz, probably from all of this pounding I have done over the past few months from giving advice. I guess its time to invest in a new one.

Also, I would be SO HAPPY to be wrong about this and perhaps she does have some major infection that is causing inflammation on the 8th cranial nerve that could indeed affect her mobility but this seems so severe.
I dont mind being wrong especially about something like this so please let me know how it goes tomorrow and lets hope I gave the most off the wall advice ever on here. I would do back flips with joy if you tell me its an inner ear infection!

Meantime, you can buy some babyfood and let her lick it. Chewing takes up too much energy it seems, so they would prefer to lick if they had something that was of any interest to them. Even strained fruit would be good at this point. Mashed watermelon or the juice from watermelon may also be something she would like and maybe suck from a syringe for you.

Heck, melt some ice cream. Who cares about the sugar content at this point. A little sugar wont hurt anyhow.
I am hoping she is going to pull through. I tend to lean more toward the negative side of things since I have seen so much over the past few years of working with rats, my own and other peoples rats too.