seizure and bleeding

Question
I'm completely puzzled.  My beloved rabbit passed away today from something that baffles me.  When I went to clean out his cage today he was breathing very shallow, his food bowl was still full and he was covered in urine. He had been fine earlier when I woke up that morning to feed him at 8 am.  When I went to feed him and clean his cage at 6 PM he was acting the way I described earlier. I lifted him up and he started crying and crawling to my neck. Scared I called every vet that was listed in the yellow book. Being a Sunday at around 6 PM everything was closed.  Now panicking i called everyone i knew to seen if anyone knew bout rabbits. At this point I had him on my chest with a blanket and a space heater in the room.  When i couldn't get anymore info other then wait it out till you can reach a vet i decided that i had enough and was going to the nearest vet closed or not and gonna get someone to help my sick bunny. I went to the bathroom and layed him on my lap and to my dismay i noticed that his leg was bleeding and searched for a cut that my have caused it but i did not and with this new symptom i wrapped him in a warm blanket and headed to the vets office. On the way there he had a severe seizure and stopped breathing. I gave him CPR but it did no good. Sadly my little thumper passed away, but i need to know what killed my bunny without warning or symptoms. Please any thoughts or ideas will help.

Answer
Dear Christine,

I am very sorry about the terrible loss of your bunny.  You don't say where you are located, but if you are in the UK, Europe or Australia, and your bunny was not vaccinated against VHD, then I would worry about this viral disease, which kills via massive internal hemorrhaging, something like Ebola does to humans.

If you saw any other signs of bleeding from the nose, eyes, ears, mouth or vent, this could be the cause of death, and it would be important to have this confirmed by a rabbit-savvy vet via necropsy and histopathology:

www.rabbit.org/vets

VHD virus is very resilient, and if your bunny succumbed to this terrible pathogen, it will not be safe to bring another rabbit into the house any time soon.  The virus can live on inanimate objects for a long time, so unless a rabbit visitor is vaccinated and has developed immunity, the virus could also infect and make him sick.

If you are in the US, VHD is far less common.  The signs of distress you describe, including the urine incontinence, suggest that he may have had a high fever, often indicative of a systemic infection.  I know this comes too late to help your friend, but the protocols here would be something to do until you can get him to a vet:

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

Body temperature is a vital measurement of what exactly is going on in a very sick rabbit.

Unfortunately, a post mortem exam is the only way to get enough information to know exactly what caused Thumper's death.  But a rabbit-savvy vet can do this, too, if you still have his body and it has been kept very cold.

I am very sorry about your terrible loss.  Please accept my healing thoughts.

Dana