PDD

[kathis]

Hi, I am new to the forum. We have a 6-year-old Senegal (OG). OG has brought so much love and joy to our home, and we couldn't possibly love her more than we do.

We recently noticed that she was having increasing balance problems, falling off her perches often. She also seemed to be having more and more trouble holding on to anything. We took her to the vet the other day and were devastated with the possible diagnosis of PDD. Our vet did blood work and took x-rays. All of the results are not in yet, but it appears that she has low albumin and calcium levels. She has dropped from her regular weight of 115 to 120 grams to 109 grams. Our vet wants to wait until the results for the beak and feather disease come back, and if that is negative she may want to do a barium swallow, as she thinks that OG's digestive tract is not absorbing her nutrients.

We cannot bear the thought of losing her. So far all of the information we have found does not give us any hope of her surviving.

We have no idea how she could have been exposed to this disease as she is never around other animals, other than boarding for 10 days at the vet's office about 1-1/2 years ago.

I wanted to share this story with others that will understand how we are feeling and may have some advice for us. We are anxiously awaiting the additional test results, and I will post any new info that we receive.

Kathi - OG's mom

[entrancedbymyGCC]

I am so sorry to hear this. I will be anxiously hoping you can post some good news. I don't know what I will do when I am faced with something like that. Good luck to you and OG.

[kathis]

Thank you, we are praying for good news to report.

[lzver]

So sorry to hear your little OG isn't well. Hopefully its something treatable.

Keep us posted. And that's a classic picture of carrot beak

[el-parrot]

i am so very sorry to read this. Thinking of you and your sennie.

[ptuga72]

I am so sorry Kathis, I am hoping to hear some good news about OG's diagnosis. I can't imagine going through that with one of my babies

[entrancedbymyGCC]

I am a new bird owner and I didn't know much about PDD, so I googled it this morning. Perhaps you have already found this site, but it does have a bunch of stories about people and their birds living with this condition:

http://www.stoppdd.org/livingwithpdd/livingwithpdd.html

[birdvet]

So sorry to hear that. I truly hope OG doesn't have PDD...fingers crossed!!! Your vet might want to look at proper PDD diagnostics such as Bornavirus PCR or a crop biopsy which might show plasmocytic/lypmocytic infiltrates which gives a conclusive diagnosis for the disease. A barium study might indicate an enlarged proventriculus but other diseases such as Macrorhabdus (megabacteria) and lead poisoning also cause an enlarged proventriculus so personally I don't think you're going to learn much from that, but that's just my humble opinion. Incidently, in light of the fact that your bird is showing neurological signs (loss of balance etc), I would test for lead and zinc toxicity as well. Just because no heavy metals show up on x-rays doesn't mean you can rule the problem out. She may have already pooped the metal out but still have the toxin in her bone marrow.

Good luck, keep us posted!

[kathis]

Thank you, we are keeping our fingers crossed as well. I believe part of the blood work was to test for metals. I will double check on that when she calls us with the rest of the test results. I am still praying that it ends up being something we can treat. OG had a relatively peaceful day, and we are grateful for that.

[kathis]

We are still waiting for additional test results to come in. OG seems to be having a good day, as she is "tweeting" a lot more than she has recently. She still cannot grip her perches and isn't eating much, but she appears to be happy and that gives me hope.

I've done some more reading about heavy metal toxicity, and the symptoms are very similar to many of those that OG has been having. I am actually hoping that it is heavy metals vs PDD, but I seriously doubt it could be. OG has been in the same cage for six years, and when out of the cage she is with us always. I make all of her toys myself, with toy parts coming from only bird supply stores. Even after reviewing the list of places a bird is likely to be exposed, I cannot see anyway that she has been exposed, but like I said, I am praying that I am wrong.