I'm afraid I have some bad news about Harriet.

Yesterday morning when I got the budgies up, I noticed that she wasn't able to use her right foot. (The picture attached was taken before she lost the use of her foot.) I thought that maybe she and Pippa had had a fight, or that she had injured it in some way, so I toweled her and gave her some of Pippa's leftover pain meds and looked at her foot. There wasn't any visible sign of injury, but she was definitely unable to move her toes. By an unbelievable stroke of luck, my vet had an opening at 2pm, so I took Harriet in to get looked at.

Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good. The vet found a significant amount of bruising in Harriet's abdomen, indicating that she likely has some kind of organ dysfunction that is resulting in pressure being put on the nerves that control her right foot. The most likely causes, according to the vet, are either kidney cancer or reproductive disease. Because budgies are so small, and because of Harriet's age (she's 9) and relative fragility (since she's already had surgery for reproductive issues), the vet isn't confident she would survive the major surgery required to determine the problem, and the odds are there wouldn't be an effective treatment anyway.

So the decision has been made to try to keep Harriet comfortable with anti-inflammatory pain meds and in a hospital cage until her quality of life declines enough that it will be kindest to euthanize her. She is still allowed out with the other budgies, so she's not totally isolated, and as of this morning she is still eating well, destroying toys, and being very active and vocal (her wonky foot doesn't slow her down at all!), so right now she's doing well. She has already outlived all my other past budgies by three years (!!!), so although of course I will be heartbroken to say goodbye to this little fierce warrior, I am grateful for whatever time we have left.

Because life is exhausting, Pippa is eggbound, and of course she waited until the weekend. Yesterday I drove her to an ER vet in St. Paul (about 80 miles away) because nowhere in town was open. They found she has a soft-shelled egg that she is having trouble laying, but they were reluctant to do surgery without trying medication first, because surgery can have fatal complications (you may remember Turkey, who died during surgery to collapse an unusually large egg she could not pass on her own). They gave me meds for her and sent us home with instructions to come back if she gets worse before Monday.

On the way home, my right front fender liner in my car, which was loose from sustaining damage from frozen snow buildup on the roads over the winter and which I haven't been able to afford to get fixed, caught on a crack in the blacktop and completely ripped off. This means it's not safe for me to drive back to St. Paul until I can get my car fixed...which I can't do until Monday at the earliest.

The good news is that I'm still able to drive locally at normal speeds (it's 160 miles round-trip to the ER vet and the speed limit is 70 mph almost the whole way, and I'm not comfortable driving a damaged car like that), so if Pippa can just hang on until tomorrow at 7am, I can call my vet and get her in for a day admit. T_T So far she's doing okay but is obviously uncomfortable--she is in a hospital cage in the bathroom being kept humid, and she's getting meloxicam, extra-strength liquid calcium, and misoprostol (yes, apparently they can use misoprostol to try to induce labor in birds, too), and I'm checking on her regularly.

Please send good thoughts for Pippa that she can make it through this T_T Also, if you're so inclined to donate to my Ko-Fi, this has been A ROUGH month--I've had about $2000 in vet bills just since mid-July, and now I'm going to have car repair bills, too -_-

(Beatrix is still doing well!)

Beatrix is at the vet with possible egg-binding. They had to do a day admit, so I had to drop her off and they will call me with a treatment plan when they've done the exam.

Beatrix had a routine vet checkup on Tuesday that turned out to be not so routine. (She is okay now, though!)

As you may know, she had some issues with her liver this past summer that necessitated a diet change and a medication regimen. She's much improved and the vet said that she looks healthy, but wanted to take a blood sample to do a bile acid level check, and it was at that point we discovered that Beatrix probably has some kind of blood clotting disorder. She had bled quite a bit at her blood draw this past summer, but that can be a side effect of liver issues, and she's not currently showing any outward signs of liver issues, so the vet was baffled as to why she bled so much. It took literally 45 minutes to get the bleeding to just slow down. The vet had to put a bandage on it so I could take Beatrix home, and when I took the bandage off when we got home, as the vet instructed, she immediately started bleeding again. And she bled A LOT, like an ALARMING amount for a 113-gram bird. The vet had given her 2 mL of subcutaneous fluids before we left and that may well have saved her life.

She did eventually stop bleeding. She was very tired and groggy yesterday (no wonder, with all the blood she lost), but she has been eating and drinking and pooping normally and demanding comfort scritches, so she will likely be just fine in a couple days. The bad news is that this means we can't do any more blood tests on her, ever, because she could literally bleed to death. The vet said, however, that since we can no longer check her bile acid levels, we will just keep her on her current medication regimen for the rest of her life--it won't hurt her if her liver is normal, but it will help her if the liver issues recur. It just means that hopefully she won't have some other issue come up down the line that would need a blood test to diagnose.

It was a VERY scary Tuesday for all of us and I'm very glad that Beanut pulled through (and is otherwise healthy!) <3

We got the results from Beanut's blood work back. She has an infection (which we knew), and also it looks like she has early-stage liver disease. Fatty liver disease is unfortunately common in cockatiels, but the good news is that if it's caught early on, it's mostly reversible with medication, diet changes, and exercise. She's also on metronidazole for the infection (she haaaaates it but at least she's halfway done with the 10-day course!).

She is NOT happy about the diet change (she's basically not allowed to have any seeds, ever, anymore, and no more human food except very, very occasionally) and her weight did drop two grams initially, but she seems to have gotten over her stubbornness and really chowed down on her chop this morning, and her weight is now holding steady! I'll be continuing to work with the vet to make sure the bird wife gets back to good health <3

SO. Beatrix' health saga is still not quite over. Her bloodwork came back and she has, according to the vet, "a bit of a high white blood cell count", likely indicating that she has a minor infection (which is kind of what we thought anyway). They also did a test for chlamydophila bacteria, which had to be sent out to a separate lab, and we are waiting on the results of that test first because it will determine what antibiotics she will get and for how long.

She ALSO had a blocked nostril that I noticed on Monday, so we went to the vet (AGAIN) yesterday to get it looked at. The "good" news is that it was just a blood clot and was pretty easy to remove. They think that the stress of the blood draw, plus the fact that they had to use her jugular vein because she wouldn't stop kicking her legs (T_T), caused her to have a little nosebleed, which left a clog in her nostril. Her nostril has stayed clear and she has no nasal discharge, which is a good sign! She's also been MUCH more herself today--she was very quiet yesterday, which was concerning. T_T Sometimes her constant squeeping gets a little irritating, but today I'm glad to hear it <3

I apologize for the radio silence! Things have been, uh, busy.

The good news is that Beatrix just appears to have a bacterial overgrowth in her digestive tract! The vet says that the apple cider vinegar in her water should take care of it, but to keep an eye on it and if it doesn't get better or gets worse, they'll prescribe an antibiotic.

Here is Beatrix at the vet yesterday for her blood draw, which she is still mad about today.

So. I was out of town at a conference for a couple days and came home last night. When I went to put Beatrix on the shower curtain rod so I could shower, I noticed the feathers around her vent were BRIGHT green, which is DEFINITELY not normal. I called the vet this morning and she had an appointment this afternoon. They took a poop sample and did a buccal/cloacal swab for some testing. (They tried to draw a blood sample, too, but she kicked at the last second and they weren't able to keep the needle in long enough to get any, and then they didn't want to try again today because birds don't have a lot of blood to begin with, so we're going back next week to try the blood sample again.)

The good news is that Beatrix is otherwise acting totally normally: she's eating fine, pooping fine (other than some yellow-green urates--probably the cause of her green butt), being social, she screamed at everyone in the vet's office as usual, etc. The vet doesn't seem that concerned at this point, but right now we have no idea what it could be--it could be anything from a bacterial infection to liver disease, so we're just hanging in there waiting for the test results to come back. Beatrix is molting SUPER hard right now, so best-case scenario it might just be related to the physical stress of molting. They did have me put apple cider vinegar in her water (which I admit I have been skeptical about, but my vet went to the #3 vet school in the US and knows her stuff, so I guess it is in fact legit) to see if that might help. Other than that I'm just monitoring her for the moment.

SO.

Friday morning, I uncovered the birds‘ cages to find that Harriet had prolapsed AGAIN. She went to the vet ASAP, they put her butt back in and stitched her butt up a little to hopefully keep everything in place (they were planning to do this the last time she prolapsed but they ended up not being able to get her to stay under anesthesia long enough so they couldn’t do it), I brought her home and went back to doing my work.

Less than an hour later, I checked on her to find she had ALREADY PROLAPSED AGAIN. Back to the vet. They again put her back together and restitched her butt (they were able to move the stitches a little closer together than they were originally) and sent us home.

So far, so good at this point. Harriet is hanging in there and eating, drinking, and pooping normally, but she is restricted to a hospital cage for seven days until her stitches come out and has to take an anti-inflammatory AND she had to get a prescription for tramadol. (I will be moving her into a bigger hospital cage after she has a couple days to heal.) This morning I at least brought her out so she could see the other birds and Spencer went to visit her. She was actually very happy to see him (which I was not expecting because mostly she just ignores him!) and she even sang to him a little! T_T

An update on Phin.

He has been hanging in there like a champ, but his liver tumor is gradually getting the better of him. We knew that this would happen, and he has technically been in hospice care for a few months now. He is getting painkillers twice a day and liver meds as prescribed, which have helped stabilize him, but he is starting to show evidence of decline. I am doing everything I can to keep him comfortable.

He is still eating, preening, and being social, but he sleeps more than he used to and is having trouble regulating his body temperature. As you can see in the photo above, I set up the heat lamp for him and he was VERY appreciative (he immediately got his belly as close to it as he could and started happily beak-grinding). I am spending as much time with him as possible and monitoring him to decide if/when euthanasia might be the best option, but for now, he is clearly still finding comfort in Nelson's presence and Nelson is taking very good care of him, so I would like to keep them together as long as possible.

A rare and beautiful googly-eyed Phibbler!

(For those of you wanting an update on his health, he is doing very well! He has been getting medication to support his liver function for a few weeks now and has perked up considerably. The past couple days he has been quite active and vocal, fwibbling and flirting and running around and playing with toys, which is good to see because for awhile he was quite subdued. He does, of course, still have his tumor because it's inoperable, but he is eating and drinking and pooping normally and still seems to be happy and have a good quality of life, so he will be with us for at least a bit longer <3 )

Harriet's Butt Update

Harriet is looking better today! She is behaving normally and even spent some time this evening fwibbling and chewing on a toy. She is definitely not 100%, but her butt looks MUCH better than it did yesterday (or even this morning), so I'm hopeful she'll heal up nicely. Still no idea what caused it, but since she is otherwise healthy, as long as it heals, that's the important part. If it happens again (and fingers crossed it doesn't), the vet talked about using a suture to "hold everything in place", but hopefully it won't come to that.

Phin Update

Phin is doing okay! The vet said he was a very good boy (but he always is). The bad news is that the tumor doesn't appear to be testicular, so a hormone implant would not be effective. On the other hand, it appears like it might be a liver issue, so the doctor is having me give him a mixture of lactulose and milk thistle (she gave me exact specifications but I don't feel like it's necessary to go into them here) and she said she has found that that helps many birds at least feel better, even if it doesn't affect the tumor. Other than that, there's not a lot we can do--it's just a matter of keeping him comfortable until his quality of life declines. He does seem to be staying pretty happy for the time being, so I will just try to treasure every moment I can get with him!

Phin is at the vet today getting his tumor x-rayed in the hopes it might be treatable! Please keep him in your thoughts <3

Harriet Report

The vet says that Harriet seems in good health other than the obvious prolapse issue. The vet palpated her and didn't feel an egg, but it's possible there's a small, malformed one or that she's trying to develop one but needs calcium to form the shell, so they're having me resume giving her calcium supplements. She'll be getting painkillers and kept in a warm, humid environment to try to help her lay, in case she does have a weird egg in there, but other than that they're having me give her Meloxicam (and calcium) and monitor her for a couple days. If she doesn't seem to be improving, she'll need to come back for x-rays to see if we can figure out what caused the prolapse.