Problems with Fnug

I wrote this on a forum to get some views on what might be wrong with Fnug.

I'm also going to post it here, as it describes the problems quiet well even though it might not sound/look too much like a blog entry:

First a little background story:
Fnug is about 5 years old.
When she was born she had a weight of 30 grams. The day after it was 29-28 grams, and she didn't gain any weight until she was about 3 days old. We had to give her some extra milk to help her out, even though mom did have enough milk for both kits.
Here eyes were closed, so we helped her open them.

She's always been a bit weird. She can sleep trough almost every thing. I've been scared that she was dead a couple of times, because I could pick her up when she was sleeping, before she noticed anything.
She also have some very weird tendencies, I've never seen in a chinchilla before, so we think she may have some brain damage.

Now to the problem:
About 1½ months ago she had some problems with her stomach. She was all bloated, and the vet thought it might be colic. A lot of fibreplex and tummy rubbing later she was all better.
When they checked her for this, they noticed a heart murmur.

Yesterday we were at the vets again. This time because of a swollen leg.
It turns out it's because of oedema, and this might be related to her heart murmur.
She's very thin, and haven't eaten that much for quite some time. But the past couple of weeks, she's been eating hay like a crazy chin. She sleeps with her head in they hay, so when she wakes up, she can just munch some hay and go right back to sleep.
She seams to be cold. She's not cold to touch, bur she likes warm places. The warmer the better. If she could just lie with me under my blanket and eat hay all the time, I think she would be in heaven.
But when she falls asleep, she has this tendency to get something that looks like seizures. Especially her swollen bag leg starts twitching, and she's all over the place until she wakes up and looks very confused.
Today I noticed it started around her face/whiskers, and then moved down the body.

I've seen this a couple of times before in one of our late chinchillas that had epilepsy, but it's not quite the same thing with Fnug.

Other than that, she drinks a lot. Yesterday she peed on me twice in about 10 minutes. She's never done that before.
Also her feces looks normal one moment, then it looks like she may be getting a mild constipation, and the next moment she might be getting diarrhea.
If we take her from her cage, and put her into a pet carrier she can get a very bad case of diarrhea in 1-2 minutes, and the after ½-1 hour it's all gone.


I'm so lost with her.
I can't figure out if we should put her trough some tests and try and find out what's wrong with her.
At the moment I'm personally thinking kidney failure. My mom had a dog many years ago who had kind of the same symptoms with the seizures and it was kidney failure.
But the whole eating thing doesn't really fit into anything.
It gives sense to think it's the heart murmur that causes the problem.
I have always known that Fnug wouldn't be her for as long as a "normal" chinchilla.

I can almost positively rule out anything wrong with the hay and/or feed because she lives with her sister, and nothing is ever wrong with her. She's a totally normal chinchilla.

Oh yeah, and one last thing.
Fnug is not good at holding her balance if she's not walking on a sturdy surface, she nearly never jumps or runs like a normal chin, but walks along like a kangaroo.
But if she starts to run and jump, it's like she gets the hang of it after a few minutes. Often it's like she's all tired out a short while after she starts to move like a chin, and then she needs a break. She prefers to take these breaks on me or my boyfriend.
I think the whole walking thing has been getting worse with her mad hind leg.

Her weight is around 440-450 grams. It swings quite a lot between these numbers, so I can't get any closer.