Eastern Grey Squirrel having seizures..HELP!

[Carina]

Hi everyone. I just wanted to add a progress update to this thread. It's been 6 months since my last post. Madeline continued to have seizures, approximately once every 5-7 days after I last posted here, sometimes more intense than others. The duration was between 1-5 mins, sometimes as long as 10 mins. Monitoring her diet, adding calcium etc. didn't seem to make any difference. The research I did on seizure meds weren't very promising. Things like, "Your pet will never be the same. The meds take the light out of them and will not stop the seizures, they might help with frequency/intensity and they might not. Your pet will ultimately die from this". I don't have a Vet, within 300 miles, that's willing to see her and plenty that wouldn't even discuss seizure medication viability with me and said they wouldn't even put her down for me. I was told that UT would do it but due to her seizures, they'd cut her head off if I sent her there and test her for rabies. I work very erratic hours so, driving 300 miles is not really an option for me and knowing it might not even help, made it even less promising. The enclosure we had for her was about 6 sq ft and it had lots of levels, branches, toys etc to keep her entertained. Aside from when she was having a seizure, she seemed healthy and happy. Played with and chewed on things, hung out with the family and frolicked around. Her cage ended up presenting a problem with her seizures because she would get caught on things and hurt herself during her episodes. I read that you're not supposed to restrain them during seizures so this too, was somewhat of a dilemma. I would take her out and hold her loosely, with a small blanket, wore eye protection and a thick long sleeved shirt and was still scratched, plenty of times doing it. I kept a diary of every seizure (length and intensity) and diet changes on a calendar and mulled over "what to do?", constantly. I've rescued and fostered plenty of problem dogs and cats over the years and I didn't want to just give up on her. We started putting her in a clear tote and drilled air holes in the lid so she could go through it in there, without anyone getting hurt and that didn't work out either. She would just end up beating herself up in there. I would watch her and talk her through it and could easily tell when it was finally over but ultimately, it was a no-go. I decided to put her in a larger cage (a 1-3 cat enclosure that's about 15 sq.ft. and on casters) and took everything out of it except for 2 shelves at the top, small hut/house on one of those shelves, secured the hut so it couldn't tip over and padded the bottom of the cage with blankets. That way, if I happened to not be home when she had a seizure, there would be nothing for her to get caught/hurt on. 2 days in, with the big "Safer" cage, I walk in the door from work and she's seizing...The BIG ONE. Full on alligator rolls with spurts of running around in circles. Over and over, for almost 8 hours. I thought, "Surely, she was done for. Her brain would not be able to come back from this one." I almost had my husband put her down but we waited it out. Eventually, she stopped and slept. When she woke up, she seemed off, but that too, was pretty normal after an episode and just thought that she was out of it longer, due to it taking such a toll on her and just tried to be patient. She's always snapped back out of it. She just sat still, awake, staring. When I picked her up, she nuzzled me and let me know she was in there, somewhere, she just wasn't right...didn't feel well. She wouldn't eat or drink, didn't seem the least bit interested and after 2 days I got worried. Then I remembered that I still had a bag of unused formula in my freezer and decided to force some of that on her. It worked, she took it, greedily and she seemed to get better with time. Still tired and sort of out of it but she still had the will to live and would eat if I fed it to her. Then I realized that I had also bought protein and vitamin powders to make my own blocks with and that you use baby food for that so, I bought some baby food and started mixing the powders into it and feeding it to her with a syringe. I added pillows to the floor of her cage and around the walls of the bottom of it, securing the corners to the cage to keep them from flipping. She seemed better with every passing day and I was so worried about when the next one would hit her. She went back to her 5-7 day schedule and a few times, even made it to 9 days before seizing and for the most part were pretty short in duration. We also noticed that she had a tic, pushing her right hand out and back, almost all the time. Very much like you'd see from someone with neurological damage from a stroke, or something like that. We tried giving her food bits, blocks, nuts...all of it just seemed frustrate her. Like she really wanted to eat it, she just couldn't hold it still or find her mouth. She also started to turn a circle, every now and then, while eating from a syringe but everyday, she seemed a little better, more like herself so, we've just kept with it. I was talking about Maddie to someone at work one day and they told me that their sister gave her cat CBD oil for its seizures and that it worked well. I had seen the shops around town but really knew nothing about it and no one that I had talked to had suggested it but thought, "What does Maddie have to lose at this point?" I did a bit of research on it and found that with dogs and cats, it had about a 50% chance of working and to use only certified oils for best results...so they claimed. I read about how it works with the brain and it sounded like it had just as much potential as an Rx seizure drug, without the side effects and was easily available. "Probably just some snake oil nonsense but, I'll go check some of it out". I bought a small dropper bottle and discussed dosage with the clerk, deciding to buy the one for cats because it was the closest thing to her size available. We considered the weight difference and gave it a shot with her next feeding. May 16th 2020, 2 drops to 1 ounce of baby food. She was at her 6th day point of a seizure coming on, so we figured it was a good time to try it. She had a seizure, almost immediately after eating but it was tiny. Probably lasted about 5 seconds and she snapped right back out of it. The next feeding, the exact same thing happened and the next. I decided to up her dose the next time to 3 drops, to see if there would be any difference and that time, she didn't seize. We continued to give her the 3 drop dose since then and she's been much better. She still has a seizure every now and then but they're tiny. She hasn't had one, longer than 10 seconds since we started giving the CBD oil to her. Her hand tic has stopped, she gets around better and we've started trying to train her to feed herself a block now and then. She can hold on to it for a few seconds but then drops/loses it so she can't do it unassisted. Hopefully, someday, she'll be able to feed herself again. She doesn't hop around anymore, just walks around like a rat. Doesn't climb or frolic and is far from her old self but her light is still there. She still wants to be held and hang out and she's jumped a few times, lately so she's better than she was. I wish I had known about the oil, as an option sooner and would say to anyone with the same issue, should look into it and consider it as a serious option. It's been about 3 weeks since her last seizure and it was tiny. Almost unnoticeable. She might be having them when I'm not around, of course but she's better off now than she was before the oil. If anything changes I'll update again. Thanks