Hi everyone. I am new here and I am posting in hopes that maybe someone out there has been through a similar ordeal and could maybe share their experience? I apologize if this is a little long. Don't want to omit details. I hope someone can share a similar experience. I am so desperate right now.
My TAG has a long and sad history. She was a wild-caught back before the importation of wild-caught parrots was illegal. She was passed around from home to home. Four years ago, I found an ad in a classified one day searching through the paper and saw this ad for a bird that needed a home. I went to go see her and it was apparent her owners had no clue how to care for her. They were smoking in the house with her, feeding her an atrocious diet, and didn't have appropriate housing for her. I immediately took her home, got her to the vet, and gave her the proper care she needed. Once she came to trust me, she because very affectionate and is the sweetest, most loving bird out of all 5 of the birds I have. Because she lived in a nasty house full of cigarette smoke, she has damage to her respiratory system. She is very prone to getting respiratory infections and on average she probably has gotten 1-2 per year. Anytime she has come down with one, we immediately get her to the vet and she gets put on meds and it clears up right away. This last fall, she had some blood work done after I noticed she had been drinking excessively and nothing on the CBC came back abnormal. Everything was fine. No issues.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I had her out and noticed some discharge coming from her eye. It was clear and sort of bubbly. I thought she had something in her eye so we toweled her and tried to get a closer look and get it out. It looked like she may have had a small feather caught in her eye that was irritating it and we thought we got it out and things were fine. A few days later, she started breathing heavy and didn't seem well. Immediately she gets taken to the vet. Diagnosed again with another respiratory infection, given antibiotics, sent home, etc. Days later she is still not getting better and it seems she continues to get worse. We take her back to the vet and he suggests another avian vet with more experience handling super sick birds. So we take her to the clinic. They get her on oxygen right away and her breathing becomes more normal once she is on the oxygen. She is given more antibiotics. The doctor noticed her abdomen seemed a bit distended so she did an X-ray. No enlarged organs. All is well. She then does an endoscopy. One of her air sacs is so full of crud the doctor can't even get the scope into it to get a good sample of it out. She manages to get it into another air sac that is a little less full of crud and get a sample. Now we are still waiting on the results of these tests to come back and find out what exactly this is. We got some preliminary results today and it did not indicate bacteria. They still however are looking at other issues, including a fungal infection. She is also on an antifungal and staying at the vet's, on oxygen 24 hours a day.
This has been torture. We keep getting told all her tests so far are normal. But she is sooo sick! Could it be that the damage to her little body from all the neglect and smoking has finally caught up with her? The vet's solution is that if all the rest of the testing comes back normal on Monday, she needs to stay on oxygen. However, that requires the vet writing a script for oxygen and us setting up a special cage for her to keep her inclosed and on o2 continuously. The bill for all of this is HUGE. I am heartbroken right now. Has anyone else had a similar experience? What was the outcome? Please share.
Thank you so much
My TAG has a long and sad history. She was a wild-caught back before the importation of wild-caught parrots was illegal. She was passed around from home to home. Four years ago, I found an ad in a classified one day searching through the paper and saw this ad for a bird that needed a home. I went to go see her and it was apparent her owners had no clue how to care for her. They were smoking in the house with her, feeding her an atrocious diet, and didn't have appropriate housing for her. I immediately took her home, got her to the vet, and gave her the proper care she needed. Once she came to trust me, she because very affectionate and is the sweetest, most loving bird out of all 5 of the birds I have. Because she lived in a nasty house full of cigarette smoke, she has damage to her respiratory system. She is very prone to getting respiratory infections and on average she probably has gotten 1-2 per year. Anytime she has come down with one, we immediately get her to the vet and she gets put on meds and it clears up right away. This last fall, she had some blood work done after I noticed she had been drinking excessively and nothing on the CBC came back abnormal. Everything was fine. No issues.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I had her out and noticed some discharge coming from her eye. It was clear and sort of bubbly. I thought she had something in her eye so we toweled her and tried to get a closer look and get it out. It looked like she may have had a small feather caught in her eye that was irritating it and we thought we got it out and things were fine. A few days later, she started breathing heavy and didn't seem well. Immediately she gets taken to the vet. Diagnosed again with another respiratory infection, given antibiotics, sent home, etc. Days later she is still not getting better and it seems she continues to get worse. We take her back to the vet and he suggests another avian vet with more experience handling super sick birds. So we take her to the clinic. They get her on oxygen right away and her breathing becomes more normal once she is on the oxygen. She is given more antibiotics. The doctor noticed her abdomen seemed a bit distended so she did an X-ray. No enlarged organs. All is well. She then does an endoscopy. One of her air sacs is so full of crud the doctor can't even get the scope into it to get a good sample of it out. She manages to get it into another air sac that is a little less full of crud and get a sample. Now we are still waiting on the results of these tests to come back and find out what exactly this is. We got some preliminary results today and it did not indicate bacteria. They still however are looking at other issues, including a fungal infection. She is also on an antifungal and staying at the vet's, on oxygen 24 hours a day.
This has been torture. We keep getting told all her tests so far are normal. But she is sooo sick! Could it be that the damage to her little body from all the neglect and smoking has finally caught up with her? The vet's solution is that if all the rest of the testing comes back normal on Monday, she needs to stay on oxygen. However, that requires the vet writing a script for oxygen and us setting up a special cage for her to keep her inclosed and on o2 continuously. The bill for all of this is HUGE. I am heartbroken right now. Has anyone else had a similar experience? What was the outcome? Please share.
Thank you so much
