Coco's Diary 11/20/03 About a year ago Coco came to live with me, her owner had to return to Taiwan. Coco is an African grey. Wendell and Vivian severely intimidated this bird, so she has always lived in the living room. On Sunday morning I noticed Coco was very quiet, and seemed a bit listless. Monday I have classes from early morning until 8:30 at night, and when I came home Coco was definitely ill. I weighed her the next morning and took her to the local vet. Coco was worse off this morning so I took Coco to the birdie hospital in Tulsa. Coco really seemed to deteriorate during the trip. I left Coco there. We hope Coco survives and does not have a disease that other birds can catch. Coco is a trilingual bird. (French English and Chinese.) 11/24 Coco is barely holding her own. She is now in the birdie hospital in Tulsa for a few days. Her outlook is not good. The most likely diagnosis now seems to be Proventricular dilatation syndrome, always fatal. We hope otherwise. If that be the case, I hope very much the other birds do not also become victims. Coco has always lived in the dining room away from the other birds which is turning out to be a good thing, I think. She is such a sweet bird! 11/27/03 Coco is getting Celebrex. It is not possible to diagnose PDS in most cases in a living bird. There have been cases where birds have apparently been cured using Celebrex. We hope that Coco does not have this horrible disease. I will get Coco in the next few days from the clinic in Tulsa. I am setting up living quarters for Coco in my office, I have a cage ready, I need to figure out some way to suspend the heat lamp from the ceiling. I have a timer ready for the arrival, and have a lamp at home that I will bring here too. This is necessary to reduce the possiblity of infecting other birds. Coco did not live in the bird room, which is a good thing, it seems. Unfortunately this disease is still an unknown. 11/30/03 I got Coco from the vet yesterday. She is obviously very weak, but seems to be holding her own. She is in my office, not at home, to reduce danger to other birds. I just mixed up her medicated concoction and gavage fed her. I had always used plastic tubes before, it is certainly MUCH easier to use the feeding needles. Mixture is 3 mg celebrex, some vitamin mixture, pancreatic enzyme, baby bird hand feeding mixture, and human rice baby cereal. Although the vet toweled her when she showed me how to feed with feeding needles instead of tubes, she is so gentle that I just held her. I think I will feed her twice today, the second time with just food, as she does not like eating the easily digested things that are best for her. Bird owners really should know how to gavage feed a bird, it is a difficult task for a left handed person, birds are designed to be fed by right handed ones! Also, you must have the type of syringe that locks onto the needle, the other ones tend to fly off and food goes everywhere. We will do the best we can with Coco. 12/1/03 Coco is much stronger today than ever before since the first symptoms. I did not want to bring my bird balance in to avoid contaminating it. I weighed Coco on a bad lab balance, the only one I could find that went beyond 150 g, and I got about 308 before feeding anything this morning, up from 295 on Saturday morning. Coco wants head rubs, etc. This is an EXTREMELY friendly bird. Coco does not like having metal tubes stuck down her throat, however. The metal feeding tubes are much easier to use than plastic, I find. We can only hope for the best. We hope the cockatoos, amazons, and conures do not become victims too. 12/03/03 Yesterday our biochemist and I talked a lot about Coco and PDS. He pointed out that there are LOTS of human diseases that probably have similar origins. Many human auto immune diseases seem to be triggered to a bacterial or virus attack. The antibodies that are produced to defend against the bacteria or virus are similar to a normal protein, and then the immune system starts to attack them. Examples: rheumatic fever (streptococus), Goodpasture disease, many forms or arthritis, and many others.) Sometimes severe damage is also caused by inflamation caused by the immune response, that may be more like PDS. The reason that isolating a PDS virus has been not successful yet may be that the virus is already gone when the disease symptoms start. Apparently the Celebrex and similar treatments are often successful because it prevents inflamation until the infection is either cleared, or the immune response has diminished. I gavage fed Coco this morning, she eats a lot, but this seems the only way to get her celebrex and enzymes into her. I think the vet's food mixture is very sound-- parrot hand feeding formula, human baby rice sereal, youghert added to the water used to make the mixture, a pancreatic enzyme, a vitamin preparation, and finally Celebrex (10mg/kg) Coco is a smart bird, she growls at me when I come in to feed her in the morning, and normally is very friendly. Coco does not like having tubes stuck down the throat. (I give her usually 8 to 10 mL formula.) She eats hard corn and sunflower seeds, along with rice and above all egg yolk. She also will eat apples a lot. I offer her more, but that seems all she will eat now. The hard corn would seem a bad choice, but she breaks it into bits, and I never see pieces of it in her droppings. After this week, maybe sooner I am going to try to trick Coco into eating egg yolks with Celebrex in them and also put the pancreatic enzymes on the egg, No one uses our large laboratory balance, and it was broken. I repaired it and use it to weigh Coco. The weight is up a lot from the 295 a week ago, About 320 or so this morning before gavage feeding. She eats a really fattening diet, and maybe we can keep her in this life. 12/06/03 I am concerned about Coco, she seems to be eating less on her own. I think part of the problem is that I have not been giving her enough gavage fed food, Birds need 78*W^0.75 calories a day, where W is their weight in kilos. Yesterday I fed her three times, only 10mL each time, that is the amount the vet said to feed, but that does not compute to be enough to provide the 35 to 40 calories. I have fed a sick amazon and always gave her 30 mL instead of 10. Altman's says to use 20 to 35 for Amazon and grey sized birds, more for large cockatoos and macaws. I gave her 18 this morning without problem. Although she seems to eat less on her own, she seems more active and actually vocalises some, I do not know what to do to make her eat more on her own. Today marks the 14th day of Celebrex treatment, it is said improvement does not start for two weeks. We hope improvement thus starts soon! We do not want to lose little Coco. 12/6/03 I have not posted here before. I have been trying to keep a two year old grey named Coco alive. She has been diagnosed with proventricular dilatation syndrome, which until recently seemed 100% fatal. A vet clinic had her for about a week, and now I have her again. I have been taking care of her for nearly a week. The miracle drug that saves some PDS victims seems to be Celebrex. I have been gavage feeding her once a day, because she does not eat enough, and the things she eats do not get digested very well. I suddenly noticed that she seems to be losing weight more, but on thinking about it the gavage feeding I have been giving her is obviously inadequate. Parrots need 78*W^0.75 calories daily. That is about 32 calories for a 300 gram bird. My gavage feedings have not been enough, fatty foods like nuts are about 6 calories/gram. I started feeding her more yesterday. The vet said to feed her just 8 to 10 mL, but that seems inadequate, I always gavage fed sick amazons about 30 mL, and this bird is not that much smaller. Does any one else know how much you can feed these birds safely? Altman's avian medicine says from 15 to 35 mL for African greys and amazons. If I can bring the amount up to 20 mL and feed twice daily that way, and add nut meal to the feeding formula, I can easily get in excess of 40 Calories, and that is what she needs. I hope this sweet bird survives so much! 12/7/03 Yesterday Coco seemed to be in a much worse state than before. Today Coco seems a bit better. Coco does not seem to regurgitate food at all any more. She also seems to eat little on her own, in contrast to a few days ago when she ate a lot. Today she seems more active than yesterday, and climbed out of her cage, and managed to climb up onto an overhead shelf above it. Her crop seems to empty at an approximately normal rate. I gave her two 16 mL feedings yesterday. Coco is isolated from the other birds in my office, and I change clothes and bathe in antiseptic containing water when I go home. One good thing is that I never kept her in the room with my other birds, because she was intimidated by them. Unfortunately my office is an half hours drive from home. I plan to stay here until early afternoon, and then give her another 16 mL feeding. Today marks the 15th day she has gotten Celebrex in her food. Some say that improvement only begins from its use after two weeks. We hope that she improves. As a scientist I have some suspicions about this disease that are partly contrary to the general ideas. For one thing, I suspect there may be two different problems: (1) the attack of an unknown virus, or possibly there may be more than one of them. (2) an auto immune disease similar to Goodpasture sydrome and rheumatic fever in humans that is initiated by confused immune response to a virus. The latter would explain why Celebrex seems to be effective in many cases. Research is badly needed here. 12/11/03 Coco does not seem to be improving in spite of the Celebrex treatment. I have to feed her all the time, she eats almost nothing without such feedings. I have wondered why literature seems to have little indication of attempts at anti viral therapy. Contrary to what you read in many books and places the disease is MUCH more likely to attack some species than others, and age distribution is ANYTHING but even. Unfortunately the most often affected species is the African Grey parrot followed by the blue and yellow macaw. These two species alone make up a large portion of all the victims. Furthermore it is not true that all ages are equally affected. The median age is around four or so, and is probably less than that because symptoms may not show up for a long time. I wonder if antivirals like aminoadamantane might be of help! 12/15/03 Coco seemed to deteriorate some last week. She is a victim of Proventricular dilatation symdrome. (by the way, More greys are victims than any other species, blue and yellow macaws are not too far behind. She has been getting Celebrex now for three weeks. She has begun to eat a bit on her own. Last week she hardly ate at all herself all week. There are only a very few drugs that have any effectiveness against virus. I cannot find any references to using any of them with birds. Most are deriatives of nucleic acid nucleotides, modified in some manner. One that is not is aminoadamantane. I suspect in a few years this disease will be well understood. It is NOT now. 12/18/03 It has now been nearly five weeks since I first noticed that Coco was not well. It has been 25 days since she started receiving about 3 to 4 mg of Celebrex each day. Last week she seemed to deteriorate a bit each day from the day before. She was in very bad shape Thursday morning, and on Friday she seemed to regurgitate everything I gave her. She weighed only 292 grams. On Sunday she seemed a bit better. Since then she has been eating a LOT. I only have been giving her a small gavage feeding, and that only to get the Celebrex into her. She has not regurgitated now for a week, and there do not seem to be any undigested seeds in her droppings. She wants to eat almonds all the time, and several other favourite foods. It is amazing how active she is today. I hope after this near miraculous recovery this week that she suddenly does not worsen and leave us. ALTHOUGH BOOKS INDICATE THAT MOST PARROTS CAN GET THIS DISEASE, AFRICAN GREYS AND MACAWS ACCOUNT FOR THE MAJORITY OF CASES. THEIR RATE SEEMS ABOUT TEN TIMES THAT OF OTHER BIRDS. WATCH YOUR BIRD'S DROPPINGS, AND IF THERE BE UNDIGESTED SEEDS IN THEM, IT MAY BE A SYMPTOM OF THIS DISEASE. IT IS UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME WHETHER OR NOT BIRDS THAT HAVE RECOVERED FOLLOWING CELEBREX TREATMENT ARE CURED, OR WHETHER THEY WILL EVENTUALLY GET SICK AGAIN AND DIE. 1/9/04 A while back I posted about Coco, the victim of proventricular dilatation disease. This was a few days before Christmas, and she was greatly improved. Just after that she got MUCH MUCH worse, on a rapid downhill spiral. By Christmas she was extraordinarily bad off, and by Boxing Day she was near death, with her weight down to only 268 grams. I examined her droppings with phase contrast microscopy and discovered that they had many megabacteria (which can cause proventricular disease alone.) I put her in a plastic macaw carrier, and took her home and put her in macaw carrier in the bath tub with it laid down horizontally, and with a heating pad under it. I started a dramatically different routine for feeding her. The first feeding consisted of 1 gram egg yolk, 2.5 mL honey, 2.5 ml youghourt, 4 mg celebrex, a spatula full each of a vitamin prep and an enzyme mixture, 5 mL lemon juice, and 3 mL or so water, and baby bird feeding formula mixed with human baby rice cereal. I gavage fed 16 mL. I fed her four times a day for five days, without the vitamins, enzymes and celebrex for other feedings than the first. Her weight and strength grew rapidly. Her droppings no longer were black. A week ago I carefully examined them for megabacteria and found only one after looking at 280 power through the whole slide several times. I now usually feed her this way three times a day. I have her weight up to 328 grams after fasting overnight, she gained 60 grams since Boxing Day. She also vocalises some. The idea is to get her strength up, and hope that this will make her strong enough to survive for a long time. My current problem is getting her to eat because I fed her so much that she seems content to have all her food intake from gavage. Her droppings look normal. She now acts more like a bird, instead of just sitting on a perch or worse on the floor of the cage from being weak. The plan is to bring her to the University next week when classes start and then she can be in a cage without worrying about spreading disease to other birds. I am a bit concerned about how I am going to convince her to eat decently to keep up her weight. Any ideas? 1/15/04 Coco has now been in my office since Monday morning. She is going home with me tomorrow for the long weekend. (She is the PDS victim.) She has done amazingly well the last three or four days here, she vocalises and looks normal. She also eats a lot on her own. She was devouring rice and a piece of a pear. I forgot to weigh her this morning before feeding her, but before her second feeding she was about 340, amazingly up from the 268 around Christmas. I plan to keep giving her three feedings with lots of youghourt, lemon juice and honey for a while yet, perhaps after a fortnight I will try to taper off feeding her and see if she eats enough to keep from losing weight. She does not look sick now. She also "helps" me mix up the food I gavage feed her. She does not object to being fed that way much any more either. 1/28/04 I have posted before about Coco and her problems that were diagnosed at Tulsa as probable proventricular dilation symdrome. She first fell ill in mid November. She was very ill when I took her to the vet clinic in Tulsa, and then she gradually got better over the next two weeks, then she got much worse, then better again, and around Christmas she was near death. She had celebrex after the visit to the vet clinic. I dramatically changed her treatment that day after I discovered after careful examination of her droppings with phase contrast microscopy that there were lots of megabacteria in her droppings. (These are resistant to virtually all antibiotics, though some antifungals seem somewhat effective.) I immediately started feeding her four times a day by gavage, using half lemon juice for the liquid component, and about 3 grams of honey in each feeding along with about 3 grams of youghourt. She immediately began to gain weight, and no longer regurgitated all I fed her. She weighed only 268 grams on Christmas. She gained weight very rapidly, and now weighs about 340 grams. I fed her four times a day for a fortnight, and since have been feeding her three until now. She eats quite a bit, so now I feed her three times a day one day and two the next. She no longer fights having me put a feeding tube down her throat. She acts completely normal, talks, and plays normally. I have her in the bathroom with a small heated cage in the bathtub to isolate her better from the other birds. She has learned to imitate flushing toilets and other undesirable sounds in there thanks to her location. She eats quite well on her own, but I have been feeding her so much that she does not have a chance to eat much. The weather has been outrageous here the past week, or I would have brought her to the University. She seems to find that environment better than a bathtub. About 1/3 of the diagnoses for proventricular dilation symdrome are wrong. A lot of birds treated with Celebrex are healthy several years later, so maybe she has some hope for long term survival. Today marks the 34th day since I started the heavy feedings with acidic food. 2/9/04 Coco, the PDS victim, is doing better and better. This morning before a gavage feeding she weighed 348 grams, less than ten grams from her normal healthy weight. I have been feeding her twice a day for the past week, but she continues to gain weight, even though I formerly fed her three times. I am going to try to cut her feedings to one a day in a few days. She eats a LOT on her own now. I still give her between 3 and 4 mg of Celebrex daily. The real question is; is this treatment a cure or not. There is some indication that it often is. We hope that it is! I think I disagree with the frequent advice from some vets that victims of this disorder should be killed when there is really hope from this treatment. There is a web page somewhere that discusses this disease that describes many experiences with this disease. Coco's story should be there. I also think the way that I managed her treatment in the later part of the problem could help a lot of other people's birds. I did not devise the treatment I finally gave her at random--I gave careful thought to everything that I put into it! Today is the 45th day since I started the modified treatment. I think that the egg, honey, and youghourt were all important components of the diet. 2/17/04 I weighed Coco last night and she weighed 356 before I fed her for the night. That is near her normal weight. She seems to eat a lot on her own. I am not going to gavage feed her tomorrow and try one feeding a day to see if she keeps her weight. She eats a lot, and her droppings do not seem to have undigested seeds at this point. There has not been a day since Christmas when I did not feed her at least twice up to now, and her weight has gone up a lot from the 268 she had then. She was near death then. Before she was sick she usually weighed about 360, so she has essentially gotten back to her normal weight. I do not know when I should discontinue Celebrex, vets and everyone seem to disagree. I also wonder if I should not keep her drinking water slightly acidified to prevent megabacteria taking hold. I will just have to watch her carefully and weigh her about daily. Maybe she can survive this dreadful disease, apparently quite a few birds are still alive and healthy several years after Celebrex treatment. 3/1/04 Currently Coco, the PDD victim is down to one gavage feeding each evening. (I realise that I have gavage fed her much over 200 times since Thanksgiving!!) On Boxing Day she weighed only 268 grams. As I cut down the gavage feedings from 4 to 3 to 2 to one a day she always seems to lose 5 or six grams, and then after a week or so get up to about 350, close to what she weighed before getting sick. She acts normally, and plays with toys and makes sounds and speaks. I still give her about 4 mg of Celebrex daily. She is amazingly fond of corn and egg yolks. She devours both, and now the corn no longer goes through her undigested. That is a good sign. I plan to continue feeding her daily all of this week, and if she seems up to it, I will cut it to every 36 hours next week. By the way, if anyone need to gavage feed for a long time, get a nylon syringe. Ardes, I think is the brand I have. The polyethylene ones deform and stick. 3/08/04 Coco, the grey, has had problems since last November. Her vet diagnosed her as likely a victim of Proventricular dilation syndrome. Often this problem is accompanied by the so called "megabacteria." These peculiar organisms often cause disease similar to PDS on their own. At any rate I have been frequently examining her droppings, and noted in December that megabacteria were present. (she was near death at that point.) So I started adding lemon juice and a lot of youghourt to her gavage fed food. When I started feeding her less than once a day she immediately developed dark droppings, and there were again megabacteria in substantial numbers in her droppings. She also immediately started to lose weight at an amazing rate, which was immediately reversed by giving her the acidic food. A lot of cases of megabacteria infection seem to be occurring lately. The only treatment that seems to work is amphotericin B complexed with gamma cyclodextrin or other material to solublise. There is a product called Megabac-S that is commercially available in some countries like this. The US permits import of the material by individuals, but not for resale. Many countries (stupidly) completely forbid importing this material. This is surely an example of kakistocracy in action! I ordered some for Coco, and see if that will get rid of the megabacteria, and hopefully restore her to complete health. 3/12/04 Coco was diagnosed in November as being a proventricular dilatation symdrome victim. The has been getting a daily dose of Celebrex since then. She also has had megabacteria (sometimes called avian gastric yeast) in her droppings. Although she eats normally, I have to gavage feed her twice a day to keep her digestive system acidic enough to keep the megabacteria at bay, by adding lemon juice or vinegar and youghourt to her food. She acts very normally, and after having been gavage fed over 200 times accepts it as normal. I have obtained some Megabac-S--an amphotericin-B that is solublised. I just weighed out twice daily doses for the next five days. I plan to stop the lemon juice or vinegar whilst she is getting this. I plan to sterilise her cage very thoroughly after five days, and again after eight days. I have stopped doing this, and she soon has black droppings and megabacteria in great numbers in them. My hope is that the Proventricular dilation symdrome diagnosis was wrong, the vet thought that she had both. Megabacteria alone can cause such problems though. I also have stopped giving Celebrex. After the recommended ten day treatment here we will still feed her once a day a few days and then see if she be fine on her own, weighing her night and morning. 3/15/04 I have now given Coco the Megabac-S for six doses. She seems to be doing well. I need to examine her droppings tomorrow or Wednesday and see if the organisms are still present. These are very odd organisms. They do not seem to fit in any category properly. Often they care called "avian gastric yeasts" yet they are not like yeasts in many ways. Some feel they are a distinct class of organisms that are not properly bacteria and are not properly yeasts. They can be a serious problem. We hope Coco gets to perfect health. 3/16/04 Tomorrow will mark half of Coco's treatment with the special amphotericin-B. I weigh out 60 mg samples and place them in bottles and give them to her night and morning in hand feeding formula mixed with youghourt. (Actually this is only a bit over 1 mg of actual antibiotic.) She eats a LOT on her own, but I gavage feed her to be sure that she gets all of the amphotericin-B into her digestive system. When people who are not accustomed to feeding birds that way see it done, they think it looks like a terrible thing to do. Oddly Coco actually opens her mouth when she sees me coming with the feeding tube! Megabacteria could be Coco's only problem. We hope! I will probably examine her droppings Thursday morning when I do not have class with phase contrast to see if there be no more of those nasty organisms. 3/21/04 Starting on the evening of 12 March I have been trying to get rid of Coco's megabacteria problem. I obtained some Megabac-S and gave it to her in two daily doses of 60 mg each in her gavage fed food. I discontinued acidification of her food at first, as I had always added vinegar or lemon juice to her food, she would immediately develope black droppings if I did not do this. At any rate she quickly began to lose weight and become a sick bird again. However, this was different sickness than before, she did not have black droppings and did not regurgitate food, and appeared to be dehydrated severely and she would not eat on her own. I gave her more water, and still she did not seem to improve much. Then I started feeding her three, and two days four times a day with vinegar acidified food, and she quickly responded. Her weight was down to 325 grams largely from dehydration rather than starvation. Yesterday she appeared perfectly okay, and was still getting the Megabac-S. I skipped giving it to her one morning when she appeared very unwell. I thoroughly disinfected her cage on Thursday, and intend to do so today. The normal course of Megabac-S treatment is ten days. With this morning she has completed nine days. Last night she weighed nearly 350 before I fed her. I wish I knew why she became ill. I could take her to a vet, but doubt that if one could shed any more light on it than already I know. It could have been due to suddenly discontinuing the acidic food. It could have been due to the massive destruction of megabacteria. It could be that I gave her less Celebrex. I will give her more megabac-S tonight and tomorrow. After that I will give her two feedings a day for a few days, and use vinegar for acidification, and slowly drop the vinegar dose from 3 mL per 12 mL to 1.5 and then to 1.0. After a few days I will try to reduce her feedings to one again, and use only 1.0 mL vinegar in it. I also need to examine her droppings to be sure she has no megabacteria in it yet. The real question is did she have both megabacteria infection and proventricular dilation syndrome? It is said that 30% of the diagnoses of proventricular dilation symdrome are wrong, and that the problem is usually megabacteria, and sometimes tumours. We hope she becomes okay now. That is all that can be done! 3/23/04 Today is the last day of Coco's treatment for megabacteria. (Actually I miscounted and made two extra vials, so she should have finished yesterday, but I will give her the two extra doses.) I weighed out 22 doses when I did it instead of 20, two a day. She seems perfectly well now, but I have been gavage feeding her to get all of the Megabac-S into her, and to keep her weight up. She became quite ill on about the third day of treatment, but did not develop black droppings as she has done before when ill. She then quickly recovered, it may have been that I did not give her enough water? She madly eats hard boiled egg yolk, rice, and corn, both hard and soft. She also eats apples. In Africa these birds often eat corn crops, and are often persecuted for this. Maybe I should consider giving her St. John's wart. How much is appropriate. I will plan on checking her droppings tomorrow with phase contrast microscopy. (Bird droppings are not particularly beautiful things to look at!) 3/26/04 Since Coco has finished her treatment with the Megabac-S she seems remarkably better. Her droppings are no longer dark, and she acts completely normal. During the treatment she seemed to be a bit ill, perhaps it was reaction to the product. I still have been giving her Celebrex by gavage each evening, though she eats enough (to say the least) on her own. I received three email messages from people who had had birds diagnosed with proventricular dilation syndrome and whose vets had convinced them to kill the birds as they said there was no hope of survival. In all three cases post mortem examination showed that the birds did NOT have proventricular dilation syndrome, and that their birds were simply murdered by an idiot incompetent vet! (There is no other word to describe such idiots than idiots!!!!) One lady had had a vet kill her three macaws, and none of them really had it! There is no test for this disease, and the only way to tell for sure if it were a victim is to kill it. (Let's use the right word here it is killing that they are doing.) Most real victims will apparently respond to Celebrex, and a large portion apparently can even be cured by this treatment. A study I saw said that only 70% of the diagnoses of proventricular dilation syndrome are correct. If an incompetent vet suggest that you kill your bird after making such a diagnosis, there is thus a 30% chance that this vet is murdering it! The most common misdiagnosis is megabacteria. Unfortunately many proventricular dilation syndrome victims also become infected with these organisms, so presence of megabacteria does not indicate that the bird does not have proventricular dilation disease. Megabacteria can usually be detected in droppings, all that is required is a good microscope, preferably phase contrast. These organisms look like nothing else. If the bird have megabacteria in droppings and shows PDS symptoms, the odds are in favour of the bird NOT having PDS. If you have access to a microscope it is easy to do. The organisms look like huge bacteria about 35 microns long. (a 20X phase objective coupled with 10x or so oculars works best in my opinion. The organisms are quite large even under this low power.) Simply place some fresh droppings on a slide, add a bit of water and cover slip and carefully scan the slide. I never tried to do it without phase, the organisms might now stand out as strongly with ordinary microscopy. Coco's situation is unclear. She certainly had massive megabacteria infection. The question now is does she also have PDS. I plan to stop giving her Celebrex in a few days to see if she stays okay. I am considering giving her an acidic gavage meal containing youghourt and lemon juice for a few more weeks yet to reduce the chance of recurrence of megabacteria. I also place about 10mL of vinegar in each 250 mL of drinking water I give her. I must weigh her daily through all of this. (Current weight last night before I gavage fed her was 350, nearly her normal weight before she became ill.) Coco's vet was very competent, and was not anxious to kill her, and also recognised that PDS diagnosis is only a guess in a living bird. If only all vets took her attitude!!!!! We can thank her that Coco is still in this (transitory) life. 3/30/04 Since I finished Coco's treatment for megabacteria about ten days ago she has been completely normal, though I fed her small meals of youghourt to reduce the chance of reinfection once a day. She has talked, and her weight has been slowly rising. She weighed 350 grams last night, about what she weighed months ago before her problems began. She has had no undigested seeds in her droppings, and they were not dark as they often were before. I put her on my arm, and played with her a long time last night, and she talked and beeped like the microwave and acted completely well. In the night I heard a strange sound, I thought it was something outside, but I think it was she. This morning she was lying on the bottom of her cage near death, too weak to hold up her head. I had to come in to work, she was weakly standing on the bottom of the cage when I left. I fed her a small meal before I left, but I suspect she will not survive this day. Our individual lives are transitory, both for us and for all living creatures. 3/31/04 Last night when I got home Coco was lying on the cage bottom, barely alive, she tried to raise her head a bit when I came into the room. I went back out to the car, and wondered if I should try to feed her, but when I came back in she had died. It was with her like my uncle who I never knew. He had been sick, and had recovered, then suddenly died. Since she had finished her antimegabacteria treatment she was absolutely normal, and was gaining weight. (I weighed her Monday night, and she weighed 352 grams, her normal weight.) My yellow clivia was blooming near her cage, fitting for the departure of such an incredibly sweet bird. 4/2/04 Thanks for all the encouragement. PDD is a dreadful disease. I often wonder if really is not more than one disease with similar symptoms, because data on it seem so variable. I hope the other birds remain okay. Coco was never with them, she lived in the living room away from the bird room. After she was ill I always handled her last at night, and never handled the other birds after that. The problem is that the most contageous time was probably before she became ill, and this disease seems to have a very long incubation period. There are no other greys in the house, and no macaws, the birds most often victims. Cockatoos are frequent victims, though less than macaws and greys. The yellow clivia that had just started to bloom when Coco died is now spectacular. A botanical memorial for her. Back