One Sick Bird

Well, some of you may have wondered where I wandered off these last 48 hours. My bird seems to have had some type of stroke and I have been trying to nurse her to some version of health these last 48 hours. Currently she is one sick bird. I have a Double-Yellow Headed Amazon, subspecies Tres Marie and we have been together over 28 years. She has had some health issues in the past, but has been healthy these last two years. Three years ago I finally discovered her true gender, she laid an egg for the first time since we were together, even the various vets believed her to be a male...

Anyway, you may have noticed that I don't use the term "own" this bird. We have been together so long that there is no real way that I own her anymore than I own the air I breathe. I may have owned her the first few weeks, but after that, whatever she needed or wanted, she usually got. Not much different than having children. Actually, many people teased me that she was essentially my child. We have had many adventures together, she has been through a lot of moving, she has been through a marriage and a divorce, and most recently, she has been on the road whenever we travel. I do not leave her or board her if it is at all possible, especially as she has gotten older.

When I first encountered her, she was a pretty sick little bird too, and it took the vets and I about a year to clear all her respiratory problems up. We discovered in that year that she had allergies and a light form of asthma. We were able to create allergy shots for her, and I learned to clean out her nose when she got too congested. You could say that our relationship developed quickly due to her need for medical care, but even though I was giving her shots several times a day, she quickly learned to trust me in all that I did. She did also learn to hate one particular towel (which I always used to wrap her up prior to giving her a shot or flush out her nose...) but after all was said and done, she did trust me to help her feel better.

Two years ago, she seemed to have had some sort of mini-stroke (my observations, not the vet's), not sure what it was, but she lost some movement in one of her feet. She seemed to be in a lot of pain when she put weight on her foot, so we assumed she wrenched it somehow. We took her to the vet and he provided her some pain medication and some antibiotics, but she quickly got worse. At one point, she had lost so much weight that we thought for sure she was not going to survive, but once I discarded the medications and just gave her protein drinks, she rallied and became healthy again.

A year after that episode is when she started laying eggs, which is very odd for a bird as old as she was. (BTW - she was estimated to be around 7(ish) years old when I found her, don't know where she was for her first years..) She stopped laying eggs last year for which I was very grateful, since I didn't want to cook the ones she laid and I was also told that a bird in her mid-30's laying eggs was hazardous to her health. She still seemed fine, with some bouts of depression when we were not on the road.

She loves traveling more than any animal or person I know. If we don't drive around with her after a month or so, she gets depressed and then sick...

Well, late this last Friday evening, I heard some scrabbling on the bottom of her cage and knew something was not right. After 10pm she is usually on her night-perch and doesn't move around until dawn the next day. When I covered her that night, she seemed fine, but when I uncovered her around 11:30 that evening, she was on the floor of her cage with her wings spread out. When I reached into the cage to see what was up, she just fussed at me, but couldn't move. I thought she had somehow tangled her foot on the floor of the cage, so promptly went underneath to see if I could help.

What I discovered was that she was unable to move either of her legs or feet. Her right foot was curled up, and her left foot was open, but would not close. The only thing that moved on her was her beak and her wings. I picked her out of the cage and tried to see if anything was broken. I discovered that she had lost a frightening amount of weight, but could not find anything else wrong. Since then, I have spent all my waking hours with her, trying to entice her to eat and drink and hopefully regain the use of her legs and feet.

Today she is looking perkier, but is still unable to move either of her feet. She is learning to move around by dragging her body with her beak and with her wings. I continue to spend the majority of my time with her on either my lap or chest, or on a pillow right next to me. She is more alert today and not sleeping as much, but I am not sure she is out of the woods yet. What she is eating today is a protein drink (ST-5) and that does seem to be giving her extra energy. She doesn't seem to be in any significant pain, but seems to go through bouts of extreme frustration because she cannot climb onto her perch, nor can she sit on my shoulder, which she loves to do.

I will continue to work with her, hoping that she will rally, but if you do not see me online much, please realize that I am not ignoring you, but focusing on helping my bird recover. I was forewarned that due to her earlier respiratory illness, she may have a shortened life expectancy (this species lives to be about 50 years old), but she is still relatively young for her species and I am hoping that she will recover fully, like the last time. I am even hoping that the ST-5 combined with a little bit of our StemEnhance product from StemTech will help her to recover. The ST-5 has done wonders so far this weekend, and I will start her on the StemEnhance first thing tomorrow. (The StemPet product does not seem to appeal to her since it was designed as a chewable pill for dogs and she doesn't want to chew anything right now. The good news is that she really likes the ST-5 in both juice and plain water.)

I will keep you all posted, sorry this was a long rant, but I am very worried about my companion, and anyone who has had the privilege of being owned by a dog, cat, or any type of pet, most likely understands the worry and pain I am going through. I admit, I am greedy, 28 years has been great, I would like another 10 more years with her. She has done a lot to improve my quality of life.

Until tomorrow...