Worried. New here. Sun conure bruised wing.

[Pajarita]

Hmmmm, broken wings require an 8 bandage so the wing is completely immobilized and can heal correctly... She doesn't have an 8 bandage.

[lizarosco]

Does it make a difference if it's her joint that's fractured? I think it's like what we'd call the elbow, not the shoulder? I honestly don't know about any of this so I'm completely dependent on what the vet says.

[Wolf]

Find a picture of a bird that you can mark the joint that is broken for us. I think that the joint that you are referring to is actually what would be our wrist joint. If you start at the end of the wing where the flight feathers stat and move in toward the birds body the first joint is like our wrist.

[Pajarita]

Yes, a drawing or chart is always useful but, as far as I know, it makes no difference where the fracture actually is in the wing, they always use the 8 bandage because it 'holds' the wing close to the body so it's completely immobilized which helps it heal while eliminating any possibility of pain from movement. The way they bandaged your bird, he could easily get the bandaged part snagged somewhere and hurt itself by trying to pull it free while with an 8 bandage, that cannot happen.

This is an 8 bandage from the side:



and this is one from the top (see how the bandage goes around the body of the bird but under the 'good wing' so the 'bad' one is immobilized against the body?)

[lizarosco]

Yeah that bandage looks like it makes sense. The one she has on now doesn't make sense to me. And I swear her wing is a lot more perpendicular to her body now with the bandage than it is parallel.
Going by the picture of the wing it's the one labeled 'elbow' that is broken on her. And on the full bird picture it's where the humerus joins the ulna and radius. That joint is the one that I believe is the broken one. He said she must've knocked a piece out of place? Something like that. And when I had checked her wings a week ago, it was the joint closest to her body (but not her shoulder) that felt very large. It didn't feel swollen, but just thicker and more like a harder ball.

[lizarosco]

These are some pictures I took to show how her wing looks.
This is what it looks like from the side. You can see her normal wing where it should be placed and the bandaged one poking out.

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You can see how from the front the broken side hangs lower than the normal one.

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Another one from the side:

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And just some more from random angles. I hope these give you a gist of how it's broken and bandaged.

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Sorry if the pictures aren't at the right angles or poor quality. I uploaded them as quick as I could. You might have to turn your head a bit to look at them properly. Sorry.

[Wolf]

Thank you for clarifying where it is broken. I knew that the bandage job was a poor one as even I know better than to do it the way that it was done. Perhaps it is time to get a new vet. You need a good vet that has some idea of what they are doing and why. Your bird deserves better and what is going to happen when you don't know what to do or have time to find out to teach your vet.

[lizarosco]

I woke up this morning and saw that Fawkes managed to take her bandage off. So I'm going back to get it redone. But now I don't know if there's a point if they're just going to put on the same bandage. My dad said he feels that the vet knows it's too late to do anything for her wing. That if it had been fractured this whole time it's already healed wrong and he feels the vet just put that simple bandage because he knows there's nothing else he can do and just doesn't want to tell me but wants to make it seem like he's attempting to do something about it.
I broke down crying as soon as he told me that. It's just my dad's assumption but it still broke my heart. I'm at a loss. He said to continue going to this vet but then to go to another vet to get a second opinion, even if it's only for peace of mind.
I can't even tell you how much I've been stressing out these last few weeks. It's my first semester in grad school and I've been lost and questioning my future and almost dropped out and it's just really hard. Then I have these issues with my birds and then I was diagnosed with PCOS and have had an extremely heavy menstrual cycle for 28 days nonstop now and been getting lab work, in and out of the doctor's, being put on various medications and still having to worry about projects and presentations for school and I think this might all be leading to a relapse for depression. Sorry if this is irrelevant to a bird forum and too personal it's just that I feel like I'm at a breaking point and if I could fix just one of those things it would be Fawkes. She's my main priority.

[Pajarita]

Oh, geez, yes, you do have a lot on your plate, don't you? Take it easy and don't let things overwhelm you. Time has a way of fixing things even when we do nothing but wait so give time the chance to do its magic (does that make sense to you? it does to me but it could be confusing ). Fawkes will be fine even if his wing never heals 100%. Lots and lots of birds that cannot fly... some because they have bad wings, some because they have half a wing (as in the case of pinioned birds), some because they are clipped, some because they simply lost the ability to do it and, given the right home and keeper, they can still live happy lives. I had a cockatiel that was blind, pinioned and had half her feet missing and she did not have a bad life... she even had a boyfriend! You love him and, as long as you take good care of him, he will be fine so don't sweat this too much. Stuff happens... c'est la vie! Maybe, in the future, when you have taken care of all the immediate issues you have now, you can think of adopting a girlfriend for him (was he DNA'd a male?). That should make him real happy!

Now, I'll tell you what I would do. I would go back to this vet and tell him to put an 8 bandage on the wing and don't take no for an answer. Birds have a real hard time getting an 8 bandage off and it will immobilize that wing the right way thereby preventing any kind of movement on that wing that would cause the bird pain (and that is ALWAYS a good thing!). Your father might be right that there is actually nothing to do about it now but he might be wrong because, in my opinion, broken bones take a long time to heal with birds. I don't know why but that is the way it seems to me because it took less time for my wrist to heal (the only bones I've broken in my life) than it did for the couple of birds that had broken bones with me (legs and wings). And, even if I am wrong... what the heck! the worst that could happen is that the bird has to wear the bandage a bit longer and that's nothing, right? But I would also look for another vet for the future.