Your view please

Hello,

We had 2 male guinea pigs who happily lived together for the first year of their lives. They never fought one another and got on great although one (Patch) would often mount the other one (Ginge) We got him neutered but this still didnt work and he still always did it. Ginge however developed arthiritus in his back legs, the vets said this may have been caused by the mounting from Patch. So he was put on Metacam (a painkiller) and we seperated the two of them. They were seperated for about 4 months however they were often put together when we could supervise them but, neither of them seemed themselves living alone. About two weeks ago we spoke to the vet and said that he was a lot better and didnt seem to be limping around anymore so they said the two of them could move back in with eachother. We put them bak in together and they got along great and Patch didnt have any interest in mounting Ginge anymore. After about two weeks we spoke to the vet about possibly lowering his dose of metacam and they sed that he should b taken off it altogether so thats what we did. Only 3 days later (Boxing Day) We came outside to see Ginge appearing to be suffering a stroke. He was laying the cage floor silent, slightly cold and moving his legs slightly. We tried to lift him up and he started to kick stronger so we thought it was best to take the other one out and let him die peacefully. He was only 1.5 years. Do you think it could have been taking him off the painkiller which could have done this to him?