Hello, I’m Pippin, and I’m a guinea pig. Today I’m going to talk about Xrays. We have Xrays taken at the vets sometimes, to show what’s going on in our bodies.

We’re helping out our Mummy, Jemima Pett, who is doing the A2Z this year by putting together all the posts we’ve done here on George’s Guinea Pig World, to make a book on Guinea Pig Care from A to Z. You can see her posts here: jemimapett.com/blog/. We’re filling in the gaps this month.

What are x-rays?

I’m sure you know that x-rays are special photographs taken using radiation that shows what’s under the surface of our bodies. The easiest things to see are teeth and bones, which are hard tissue. Soft tissue can be seen in outline or something like that, but it takes a specialist to really see what that means.

There are also scans using sound waves, which can create a picture for the trained person to interpret. We’ll look at that too.

X-rays of us

We showed you Neville’s x-rays on the A to Z in 2022; you can see those here in detail, especially at the top of the page — it’s easy to see his round bladder stones between his hip and his spine (high up in his bladder).

I had my x-rays done the other week, to see if I had arthritis. I do, but not too bad at present. What Mummy and Dr Rebekah got very interested in, though, was my ribcage.

Most of this is pretty normal. You can see little white patches on many of my joints: ankles, elbows, shoulders, hips and knees. That’s arthritis.

My ribcage is okay where it is bone, but where it is cartilage it looks unusual. In the top picture, at the bottom of the rib cage, about level with the bottom of the letter R (for right), you can see some curly things. Those should be straight, and curve back towards my ribs like the ones above! Dr Rebekah reckons that they didn’t develop properly before I was born, and the next image gives more clues.

It’s not easy to see those floating rib cartilages in this view, but you can tell they don’t join up below. And if you compare it with Neville’s you might see why.

If you follow Neville’s breast bone down, it ends in a bone which takes the line of the others. Now look at mine. It points down!

Mummy knew very early on that I had a lump under my chest and she asked Dr Rebekah about it, who said it was just my breastbone. It’s out of place, and not supported by those twirly cartilages at all. Dr R said I probably was a big baby, too big for my young mum, who had already had two girls just before she started growing me. So I didnt quite grow fully, or at least got a little squished.

It doesn’t cause me any trouble, although it may explain some weakness. But do you remember when we said for letter N, never use a harness on a guinea pig because it damages their ribs? You can see here how fragile our ribs are generally, and mine in particular.

None of this needs any action taken. It just confirms what Dr R said a long time ago when Mummy first asked. It’s nice to see the picture though.

Other procedures

The only other procedure we know about is ultrasound, where there’s a picture done of your soft tissues to see how they are. This picture is of Locksley’s heart. It showed it was working properly, pumping away. I must admit I can’t see anything, and Mummy said she couldn’t really even when she had the moving image. But Dr R said his heart was working fine, so that was all right.

Mummy said both Victor the First and Humphrey had ultrasound at the Norfolk vets. Victor had a cyst on his kidney, but that wasn’t causing him any trouble. Humphrey had trouble with the valves of his heart which weren’t working properly, but the meds he took helped that just fine.

I hope you found that interesting. Tomorrow we get to letter Y, which is not quite what it seems.

love

Pippin xxx