Thank you all for the support!
I want to update this thread in case anyone ever runs into the same thing, hopefully this will help them have a better outcome. This progressed very fast so if anyone ever runs into this with their bird, get them to a vet or hospital ASAP!!
We first noticed Happy making these sounds around 6pm. He was still energetic and actively playing with toys in his cage. I just thought it was something that would probably get better on its own by next morning. So I had to leave for work (night shift) and since my wife was home I told her to keep an eye on him and to set up the camera so I could watch him from work when she would go to sleep. About 2 hours later my wife tells me that the noise has gotten loud enough where she can hear it from the other room. At about midnight it got even louder where the rest of my flock couldnt sleep from the noise either. At this point you could tell that Happy was starting to get uneasy. At about 3am it had gotten so bad where it was driving him crazy. He kept moving around, opening his wings constantly, and trying to rub his head on different things in the cage. I was impatiently waiting for the time to pass so I could rush back home and take him to the vet. So I get home around 7:15am and my wife is already trying to get him ready to go. At this point he had gotten so weak that the noise had become faint, and he looked like he was having a very hard time breathing. I got him in his cage real quick and jammed to the vet’s office. On the way there I noticed Happy’s eyes were starting to dilate and contract with every breath he would try to take. I actually tried to take my finger right in front of his eyes but he wouldn’t react to it. I don’t know if he was able to see at this point. I knew it was bad but still was hoping the vet can figure it out and help him. I got there about 40 minutes before they opened, but the staff noticed me looking through the window and asked me what the situation was. I explained, and they told me to bring him in right away.
They immediately put him in an incubator with oxygen pumping in. They gave him some sedatives to relax him. A few minutes later the vet tells me that she doesnt think its an infection since it progressed so quickly. She said an infection would take a few days to get to that level. She was thinking he has something stuck in his trachea which is blocking the airflow. She said as time passes, more mucuous will start forming around the blockage and make it harder and harder to breathe. And since the oxygen wasnt making a difference in his breathing, this reassured the vet’s belief that it was a blockage. She was suspecting the blockage to be a seed but I told her that Happy loved to shred his sola balls, so it could have been that maybe. She couldnt do any X-rays since he was barely staying alive at this point. (My poor Happy
). She said one procedure she could try is an “air sac cannula”, where they make a tiny incision by the leg and stick a small tube into his air sac. This will allow him to breathe normally again and then she could reach down into his trachea quickly and remove the blockage. She said its a risky procedure since budgies are small birds and the condition that he was already in. I asked a few questions and decided that it would kill me if I let my bird die without trying everything. So I told the vet I know its risky, but we have to try it. She asked me if I wanted to go in and see him again just in case the worst happened….so I did. Again, I knew it was bad but I still had hope that this was gonna save him. So I said a few words to Happy and walked out so the vet could get started. She said the whole procedure shouldnt take more than an hour.
About 30 minutes later I got a call from the vet and said a quick prayer before answering the call. It was not what I wanted to hear
. My little Happy bird didn’t make it. She said the air sac cannula procedure actually worked, and he started breathing normally again right after they put it in. But about 2 minutes later she tried to reach down into his trachea to remove the obstruction and thats when his little heart stopped beating. She tried to revive him with an Epinephrine injection but it didnt work. She said she could see something beige colored down in his trachea but it wasn’t clear enough to tell what it was exactly. She offered to perform a necropsy for free but I decided not to have it done.
Something caught my attention though when the vet was explaining what happened: She mentioned that another thing she could have tried instead of the cannula would have been to use something to quickly reach down into his trachea and push the obstruction further down into his air sac, allowing him to breathe again. She said this would have resulted in him getting pneumonia later which would have been treated with antibiotics. I don’t know if that was the better option, but I guess the vet thought the cannula was the better one given his condition.
Before I left, I asked the staff if there are any 24 hour emergency avian vets in case something like this ever happened in the middle of the night. They told me to check out “Access animal hospital”. I searched for them and it turns out they have 3 different locations all about 30 minutes away from where I live. I wish I had known about them before all this happened. It has been killing me inside for the past 2 days knowing that I could have taken my bird in to get checked out earlier in the night instead of waiting til 8 in the morning to take him to the vet. I feel like that would have made a huge difference in his condition and I probably could have saved his life. I feel like I let my little man down. It’s still killing me inside.
I can’t do anything about it.
Fly high my little Happy bird!!
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