It’s been a while - Rosie update

[kendrafitz]

It has been a super long time since I’ve visited the forum. I thought I would check in and say hello.

Rosie was diagnosed with Avian Borna Virus years ago. I was super upset and just withdrew, not knowing how long I would have with her. Then I decided to have her participate in a study with Jennifer Cunha which was teaching birds how to ask to make video calls to other bird friends. That was so interesting and we loved it. We would have done the next study but Rosie started to feel sick.

Two years ago she started having major issues with a thick green discharge from her nare. She was not in good shape and Northstar hospitalized her. It was right around Thanksgiving and I was a mess. Fortunately, the vet is an emergency vet and is 3 minutes away. So I went to visit with her several times daily, she was so sad. At one point they had me bring her back to her accommodations and I was shocked. She was on the bottom cage and it looked like it was made for a small dog. I pleaded with them to let me bring her home and I would bring her in for her treatments. Which they allowed, thank goodness! However, I was told she may not survive and to prepare myself.

Big lesson here, if you are boarding or have your bird in for a medical stay, ask to check what accommodations they have before leaving them.

Fast forward a year and a half, thousands of dollars spent and we still had no definitive answers. She was going in for shots constantly, was on every medication that can be prescribed (according to my new abc vet) and had to be put under for intubation, biopsies, scans and X-rays. They could never give me a definitive answer as to why her white blood cell count was always so high. She also began jamming nuts up into her beak and twice I had to have emergency nasal flushes. The last time they found a pistachio almost up to her brain, or that’s what they told me. So I had to stop giving her nuts bc they won’t break down on their own in her nasal cavity. Poor Rosie stopped eating due to no nuts and bc she didn’t trust medication was not in her other food.

So about six months ago I decided to just stop with the medication. It wasn’t helping and quality of life is important. Plus I needed her to eat.

About a month ago she jammed a piece of food in such a way that she was having issues breathing. I found an Avian Board Certified vet about 40 minutes from me and we switched over.

He looks her over, is shocked at how thick her chart is and does testing. A few days later he called and said he was waiting on two more tests, but from what he could see she was perfectly healthy. He had never seen a bird shove food up her beak, but maybe it is just a quirky habit. WHAT? I was very relieved, until he called a few days later.

I had asked him to run a test to see if her ABV had turned into PDD. That was one of the outstanding tests. Well, the results show a very positive yes.

Which is not surprising due to all the stress she went through at Northstar on a regular basis. Stress can trigger ABV to turn into PDD. They wouldn’t allow me to stay with her for her visits and she would freak out every time. They started to give her sedatives in her nare for each visit. Then she had a “seizure” while they were examining her and I began to give her the sedatives before our appointments. And then I just stopped bringing her to Northstar and we took a 6 month hiatus.

Since the PDD test with the new vet, we are now back to shots every 4 days to try to get her PDD into remission. She also has a sinus infection so she was on oral and nasal antibiotics.

So it seems the reason food keeps going up her sinuses is due to her possibly having issues swallowing from PDD. Thankfully that, the “seizure” and her twitches seems to be the only symptoms right now. X-rays did not show issues with her crop or stomach.

Anyway, that is what has been going on here and part of the reason I have not been active. It’s just been a lot.

Good news is she is still her ornery, silly, dancing queen self. She is still “my” parrot but loves everyone else. My daughter is away for college but my son just graduated and is working from home. So she is very happy that at least one of the kids is home.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’m sorry for having been away for so long. 💕

[PlaxMacaws]

Hi Kendra - It's good to hear from you. I feel so sad and concerned for Rosie! I remember when you received a positive test result for ABD/PDD about 6 years ago. That was quite a blow to me. Since then, I've thought about you and Rosie often. I think I remember you stating you had to give her vitamin A supplements back then, presumably related to diminished or blunted choanal papillae. If that's correct, it would tend to tie into the nut pieces and other objects being able to breach her choanal slit and thus block her sinus pathway. Those papillae are there to stop food items from getting into the sinuses. When they're reduced or gone, the risk is multiplied.

I just reviewed your post from 2018 about Rosie's vet experience. I can relate so much to it! Based on your description, it appears her choanal opening was problematic even back then. As mentioned, my guess is that's why the food items have been able to get past her choanal opening (diminished papillae).

About Rosie's sedation experience, I'm guessing the vet(s) may have been using midazolam through her nares. Both Zaf and Maynard had to have plenty of that stuff during their final months. Zaf disturbingly became desensitized to it and as a result flipped out during several of his invasive procedures. And this happened many times after higher and higher doses of midazolam, just as if he hadn't been given anything. It was as if his adrenaline levels from the terror he felt seemed to render it useless. Still, the vets and their assistants barely acknowledged midazolam was no longer working on him. I can still hear my sweet boy screaming in horror as he went through those procedures... he thought he was being tortured to death and that I was allowing it to happen. For some reason, vets fail to listen to the concerns of pet owners at times. But when the ineffectiveness of the midazolam on Zaf eventually became undeniable, his main vet decided to start using ketamine on him instead. The ketamine worked but had some frightening effects on him. I thus didn't like it, but felt there was no other choice. The pure hell never seemed to end for my poor blue companion... that is, until he took his last breath on that fateful day in February of 2023.

I will always feel that I personally and physically took Zaf's life. I say this because as a preliminary to his lethal injection, the vet, who was busy with another simultaneous pet emergency at the time, sent her assistant in with a large syringe containing a mixture of ketamine and midazolam. The instruction I was given by the vet through her assistant was for me to flood the entire contents into Zaf's nares. I very reluctantly followed that instruction, only because he had been suffering so much and I was convinced he was hopelessly losing life before my eyes and I didn't want to prolong his agony. I have many second thoughts about that now, however. Part of me feels that I was rushed to take his life by multiple parties and that I should have done far more to give him every chance. I could have perhaps had more time with him at our home had I handled things differently. Arguably, though, he couldn't have survived much longer... at least on that day. He weighed less than 900 grams - when he was healthy, his usual weight was just above 1400 grams. He was skin and bones, he couldn't eat and he wouldn't drink. He had been having spasmodic coughing and wheezing fits with wing-flailing convulsions. Yet I feel that I failed him in many ways.

Kendra, I'm so saddened to read all that Rosie has had to endure as a result of her illness. My advice, especially based on what I went through with Zaf, is to consider keeping her near you and trying to spend as much quality time as possible with her. I don't want her to suffer... but I also don't want you to feel the regrets that I will be feeling for the rest of my time. I hope that makes some sense. I'm glad you posted the update on Rosie and I hope the very best for her and you.

Tony

[Dragonlady2]

I am so sorry to hear about Rosie, Kendra. The roller coaster of emotions that you must be going through has to be monumental. Rosie is so fortunate to have you caring for her.I don’t know of another person, besides Tony, that is so dedicated to loving and caring for their birds like you. I agree with Tony, spend as much time with her that you are able.
Thank you for sharing…take care.