So I had a message on my voicemail when I got home–Squeak’s bloodwork came back earlier than I was expecting, and he has his highest calcium yet, and everything else looks good. We’ll double-check in six months, but barring further evidence of distress, he’s Vet-Certified Cockatiel.

Of course, last night he weighed in at 116 grams. The vet said as long as he doesn’t actually get fat (you can still feel his keel bone), the weight is not too much of a concern. He’s now fully on the other of the two healthiest brands of pelleted diet, so he’s keeping all this weight himself.

So presuming he doesn’t break his perch, we’re good to go.

Thanks to everybody who wished him well–something worked. While I still don’t know what it was, it seems to be over for now.

I’ll try to rant about something suitably libertarian soon.

Woke up this morning at 6 with a splitting headache. Hopefully this is one of those “everything else will seem better by comparison” types of days. But it’s Monday, so you never know.

Squeak update: Squeak, by the way, has turned into a little pig-bird. He’s broken 100 grams a couple of times, so I’m trying to figure out how to manage his weight. A bigger cage so he can exercise more is on order.

Just to keep everybody in the loop, as Patty and others were kind enough to ask after Squeak, I thought I’d post an update on his progress.

It’s been really good, so much better than I could even envision three weeks ago. He has been hovering in the 86 to 88 gram range for the past few days, so he is making progress and keeping it on. He’s even eating a more-than-half pellet diet, albeit not the über-healthy pellets he was eating. Still, plenty of time to worry about that after he’s fully recovered. I took him to the vet’s on Saturday for a recheck which went well, and they drew blood for a full panel that will be back on Wednesday or Thursday.

Hopefully at that point I can quit bugging him with his twice-daily meds which he has simultaneously gotten used to and gotten to dislike. He tries to avoid them but once I get him in The Position (flat on his back, wings constrained), he just opens up and nips at the syringe–though he’s still adept at turning his head at the last second, and he tries to avoid getting in The Position if he sees it coming. So I have to mix things up, sometimes bringing the syringes out, sometimes taking him in to them, sometimes bringing them out and then leaving them…

Yes, I am matching wits with a creature posessed of a 3cc brain. I just wished it were more of an uneven contest…

Clocking in at 79 grams and extra feisty

So there will be twice daily oral medications (he doesn’t like them, but it’s fairly easy on a bird since they get annoyed and bite things stuck in their face). We still don’t know what was wrong with him, so I bought a digital kitchen scale and will weigh the little guy. Fortunately he’s pretty good about that part.

But to see the look that sealed the deal for me to spend gobs of money making sure this moment happened, click here.

…are the two grams Squeak gained since yesterday. This despite not getting fluids last night. He was acting much more himself, and vocalizing fairly normally–he even imitated me for the first time in a couple of weeks. Plus he was feisty enough to want to escape from me and go check out the paper the vet tech was writing on.

He’s still incredibly thin–he should be 90 grams and is clocking in at 74, where he was a week and a half ago. I also saw him produce some droppings that were more water than…stuff, if you know what I mean. That scared me because that was the first clue I had something was wrong with him earlier. The vet this morning said his other stools looked OK and some fluctuation is normal.

So today we’ll drop one of his tube feedings and see if he eats enough to make up the difference. He’s not out of the woods yet, but I was fearing much worse after I saw his droppings last night.

After all I’ve been through I’m reluctant to relax, but things would definitely be bad if he hadn’t gained weight. So here’s hoping the little guy decides to chow down like it’s a Roman feast–minus the vomitorium.

Squeak was just coming off his treatments–being injected with fluids, tube-fed, and getting his course of medicines–when I went to visit him last night, so I just let him sleep in his hospital cage. The vet had gotten his blood test results back, but other than being in starvation mode when I brought him in, it wasn’t obvious what was wrong. His calcium is still too low, even lower than when they tested two and a half weeks ago.

This morning he hadn’t gained any additional weight, but hadn’t lost any, either. The vet said he was pretty feisty when she tried to handle him, so hopefully he got a lot of rest and will eat a lot today. He is eating both pellets and seed. So the plan is to try to wean him off supportive care and finish off his meds. If he still gains weight, that’s an excellent sign and he can probably go home soon.

If he doesn’t gain weight or loses any, I think we’re looking at a very tough decision.

Sorry to bang on about this, but this blog has always been about what’s on my mind rather than any one subject, so you’ll just have to trust that once this is over I’ll have something to say about other issues.

Squeak is up two grams from yesterday and his color has improved. I spent a couple of hours with him last night, and he was behaving much more normally than this weekend. Still, this puts him at 72 grams, and a week ago he weighed 74, and his normal weight is around 90. So he has a long way to go and supportive care may be the only thing working on him right now.

We’re still waiting for lab results, and that will at least let us rule some things out.

Ever since I got attention focused on Squeak, I’ve been much happier with Eastern Exotics. They let me spend a couple of hours last night with Squeak in an exam room and have been very good at keeping me informed.

Here’s a pic from yesterday’s visit:

Squeak is, if just barely, hanging in there. His weight is dangerously low, but it’s been stable for the past couple of days. He’s not in any pain–except when he gets intravenous fluids and drugs–and occasionally tries to eat and preen. He has been a headscratch-needing machine each time I’ve visited him. So now he’s on pretty much everything: liver support, broad-spectrum antibiotic, and an anti-parasitic, and he gets tube feedings to make sure he’s getting enough nutrition.

If it’s his liver and he responds, hopefully we’ll see improvement by tomorrow morning. If it’s a sneaky infection that didn’t show up in the previous bloodwork, then it will take another day or so. The bloodwork is due back tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll know more then.

Of course, if he hasn’t responded to anything in a couple of days, that is a very bad sign. But for the moment if it’s treatable, we’re making sure he gets that opportunity.

Update:
Here’s a pic I took with my phone Saturday:

Squeak is as Dignified as Ever