# What does a stroke look like?



## Sela (Apr 10, 2010)

Bad news, Hedgehog Central. Quillamina had a stroke last weekend, and although it didn't take her away from me, I'm very worried about it happening again because next time, it very well might. She has seen the vet and is on Tramadol for pain - she actually went in on Friday for her arthritis, was given Meloxicam initially, and had the stroke that night - and seems to be feeling at least a little better, as she is letting me hold her without too much complaint. I discovered that something was wrong in the first place when I went to check in her around one AM before I went to bed on Friday night (technically Saturday morning, I guess, since it was past midnight, but let's nit split hairs) and found her in a state of panic in her cage. She was thrashing around when I reached in to pick her up, licking frantically at my hands, and actively trying to bite me, which, as many of you know, is not like her at all. When I managed to get her out of her cage, I found that she had hurt herself, as there was a small cut in her chest that hadn't been there when I put her to bed. There is nothing sharp or rough-edged in her cage that she could have cut herself on, so the injury was clearly self-inflicted. I stayed up with her until after two AM, and she still wasn't calm, but she didn't look like she was going to hurt herself again, and I couldn't make myself sick by staying up all night, since it wasn't going to help her anyway.

I called the vet when I woke up and took her in, and she stayed there pretty much all day for testing and x-rays, since she had been dragging one of her back legs a bit before any of this had happened, something I had attributed to the arthritis. It now occurs to me that she may have had a small stroke before this began, although I can't be sure. When we went back to pick her up, we saw the x-rays and they showed nothing abnormal, but after some discussion with the vet about her symptoms, (confusion, anxiety, aggression, cold, clammy paws when I took her out to look her over the night before, etcetera) we were told that she had quite likely had a stroke. Given that she is now dragging both back paws, reacted exactly the same way to the event as my childhood hamster did to the stroke that preceded his death, (right down to the biting) AND I recently had to put down my seventeen-year-old diabetic cat after he had a particularly violent one and have, as such, seen the aftermath in the last few months, I'm inclined to believe that it definitely was a stroke.

Getting to the point: I am concerned that she will have another stroke while she is out with me for cuddle time, and since I have not actually seen a stroke happen, I don't know what it looks like. I barely remember the circumstances of the hamster's stroke, since I was six at the time, and my poor cat was under my parents' bed when his occurred. Quillamina was in her bed, and I was out of the room, so I didn't witness hers, either. I don't know if they're one of those things you recognize immediately when you see them happen, or if they're more subtle and I might not even realize what's going on until it's too late. I know what to look for AFTER it's happened, but I have no idea what it looks like during the actual event, and I think it's important that I have the ability to recognize it right away in order to get her to the vet as soon as possible.

So, if anyone has witnessed this sort of thing first-hand and can tell me what to watch for, I would greatly appreciate it.


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