Necropsy is no longer a viable option as we had her cremated already. But I am willing to test the toys that she played with for lead and such. As for paint, not sure where she'd have come in contact with paint other than her cage which is porcelain coated. But maybe there's lead in the porcelain coating?
jm her symptoms were not really quick per say. Back in April or so she went through a molt and just when we thought she was done it continued into her having bald patches. We thought it was her food so we switched to what we thought was a good brand food, Tropicana, only to find out it's not the best out there. Anyways, other than the missing feathers she was a happy clam. Through May/June she had two days that we distinctly remember her being very sleepy but she always perked up the next day and it was literally only those two days. We decided after doing more research on pellets that Roudybush was the best and had switched her about two weeks before bringing her to the vet for a check up. She at this point had lots of pin feathers in the bald areas and even those were slowly closing in. We brought Cara in on July.31 where they checked her over, discovered she was vitamin A deficient and also was anemic. They did a full blood panel and everything came back ok. They had trimmer her talons that day as well and we noticed in the evening while she was playing that she was having a hard time hanging onto things and kept falling, well the next day she was in sad shape, she was very very tired. We figured it was from the stress of the vet visit and gave her a day. Saturday she still had not improved so I called the vet and they thought maybe we triggered an infection and so we put her on Baytril. Well later that evening I noticed her left wing drooping so assumed she had hurt it somehow when she fell. Sadly it was August long weekend here and we had to wait till Tuesday to get pain meds for her. During this time she'd continue to sleep lots but would eat normally and have wakeful periods throughout the day. On Tuesday we put her on Metacam but didn't see a whole lot of improvement. We brought her back in that Thursday, Aug.7 and it did seem her wing was injured so we left things as they were since they needed to heal. By Monday Aug.11 she wasn't doing well at all, now her eating habits were dwindling, although she maintained her weight somehow, we brought her back in and couldn't find any reason for things to be as bad as they were. The vet hadn't suspected heavy metal poisoning because she wasn't vomiting and normally it's really quick. Well by Wed morning she had taken a turn for the worse, we quickly rushed her in where they crop fed her and watered her. They ran blood work to find out that her bone marrow had gone into suppression and that she wasn't producing white or red blood cells and had no clotting factors. All of which point to heavy metal poisoning. Sadly they couldn't get the meds needed to treat it till the next day, they gave her her first dose in the afternoon but it was too late, she passed that evening. For all we know she was just sick, cancer maybe but when you google parrot bone marrow suppression the one thing that comes up is heavy metal poisoning. I now wish we had had tested her blood for it but can't live on the what we could have's.
So there's our story of how it all went. Nothing in her cage was chipping or peeling. Although she loved to chew on her perch when we weren't home but wood you think would be safe.
None of the toys were painted though, those we stayed away from. And we'll definitely test what we have left here. Any thoughts on the cage though? Porcelain coating?
