floppy bunny vet diagnosis, what can I do?

Question
This morning one of my rabbits was not his usual self, was very quiet not hopping about not interested in me or attention(extremely unusual for him) which has happened before and withing a few hours he has been back to his usual self. So I waited a few hours then realised he had not touched any of his food and his litter box was clean except for some urine and had become lethargic.
So I rushed him to the vet where they kept him for a few hours gave him a jab of antibiotic, and some kind of vitamin nutrient paste? The vet then called me to say it wasn't looking good and implyed I might want to take him home and spend his last hours with him.
That was about six hours ago and he is still extremely lethargic, I've been syringe feeding him a little water and he hasn't gotten particularly better but has not gotten worse. Should I continue with the water, he's begun sticking his tongue out since I started giving it to him. Another friend suggested syringe feeding baby food. The vet obviously did not expect him to live this long and I'm unsure what I should be doing to help.

Answer
Dear Kate,

I'm sorry you don't seem to have found a very experienced rabbit vet.  The antibiotics were probably a good idea (can't hurt, as long as it was a rabbit-safe antibiotic), but he'll need more than one shot to get through this.  More important, though, is to deal with the lethargy, which might be caused by an abnormal body temperature.  Please read this to learn how to take his temperature:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/sickbun.html

The article also has instructions for getting the body temperature normalized so that medications and other treatments will be more effective.

I hope you can find a more experienced rabbit vet here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

who can help your bunny.  "Floppy bunny" is not a diagnosis.  It's a symptom, and that's not going to help you get to the root cause of the problem and treat it appropriately.

I hope Thumper will be okay.

Dana