wolfysluv
Sprinting down the street
HI guys. Its been a million years since I checked it it feels like. 2-3 months ago, the corner of Tika's mouth looked "odd". And it started to overgrow a tad. It stayed like that until this past month. Then it got worse. At first, hydrocortizone helped keep it shrunk a bit. It got extremely raw and I kept neosporin on it. But then none of that helped whatsoever. It never itches by the way. I brought her to the vet who is an avian vet, but has never seen this type of thing in this place on a bird. Her guess was a papplinoma caused by a virus (in the wart family). The rawness she said would come from the fact that its in the corner of her mouth. However, she called Univ of T vet school to double check. After talking with her, the experts there felt strongly it wasn't a papilinoma, but rather something like a squamous cell carcinoma. So we are heading up there to spend one day getting her accessed, tested, etc, and the next day to have it surgically removed and biopsied.
The depressing thing is the vets says if it is just a benign papilinoma .. the recurrence rate is really high.
And when I read up on diff cancerous lesions in birds ... all the ones it could possibly be, also have a recurrence rate. Some of them seem to have bleak prognosis's . Like the surgery, radiation, etc, just buys a little time because they tend to come back or resurface anyway. But I'm not an expert, this is just what I read online.
We have an important thing to factor in with our treatment choices, etc... Tika has SEVERE long term skin muiltation syndrome and this year is so bad, she is in a double collar 24/7. Its so sad. We are near the end of our rope with that. Exhausted everything (this will also be looked at by UT). In trying to figure out what to do, I just take it day by day. As horrible as it might seem for her, I think about Chris Reeves who couldn't even move. Yet he was happy and would really balk at the idea of euthanization ya know? I cant know what Tika feels ... unfortunately. Her demeanor is a 180 from when she was a youngster here. Shes extremely placid, laid back. Quiet. Is just cause shes older and shes content and cant move anyway? Or is she sad? I'll never know. But its something I'm going to consider if we come to a cross roads in as far as what to do with the growth/cancer.
I wanna put up a couple of pics. Just in case anyones seen something like this or dealt with it. And if not, I guess it'll be on record here for someone else in case they come across it. I'll go get them.
The depressing thing is the vets says if it is just a benign papilinoma .. the recurrence rate is really high.
And when I read up on diff cancerous lesions in birds ... all the ones it could possibly be, also have a recurrence rate. Some of them seem to have bleak prognosis's . Like the surgery, radiation, etc, just buys a little time because they tend to come back or resurface anyway. But I'm not an expert, this is just what I read online.
We have an important thing to factor in with our treatment choices, etc... Tika has SEVERE long term skin muiltation syndrome and this year is so bad, she is in a double collar 24/7. Its so sad. We are near the end of our rope with that. Exhausted everything (this will also be looked at by UT). In trying to figure out what to do, I just take it day by day. As horrible as it might seem for her, I think about Chris Reeves who couldn't even move. Yet he was happy and would really balk at the idea of euthanization ya know? I cant know what Tika feels ... unfortunately. Her demeanor is a 180 from when she was a youngster here. Shes extremely placid, laid back. Quiet. Is just cause shes older and shes content and cant move anyway? Or is she sad? I'll never know. But its something I'm going to consider if we come to a cross roads in as far as what to do with the growth/cancer.
I wanna put up a couple of pics. Just in case anyones seen something like this or dealt with it. And if not, I guess it'll be on record here for someone else in case they come across it. I'll go get them.
