[Gpdd] [Health] Reese has fluid in his chest

[scalabro3 at cfl.rr.com]

Hi. I noticed Reese having trouble breathing yesterday evening. He was sort of panting and you could almost see his heart pounding in his chest. We decided to take him to the vet in the morning (the emergency vets around here don't have any experience with exotics so we didn't think we'd get much help there). We don't have vog, but we do have some large forest fires in the area, so we thought that he might be having problems because of that or all of the pollen here now.  Worst case, I thought that it was a respiratory infection, but I had this bad feeling that his symptoms sounded too much like what Corrine recently described.  I went to bed worried that he would have crossed over in the night, but he was still with us, still panting, but otherwise he was eating drinking and pooing normally.

We dropped him off at the vet in the morning and when she examined him, she told us that it didn't look good for him. The x-rays showed that he had fluid in his chest. It's not in his lungs, but it's between his chest wall and his lungs.  She went over a list of things that could cause this and none of them sounded very good.  She's treating him with nebulizer treatments, antibiotics, antifungals, and steroids. She said that if he doesn't seem better in the morning, she will take a sample of the fluid so we will know what we are dealing with. Of course, this will mean anesthesia, and with his breathing problems, that could be bad.

I hated to do it, but I left him there overnight so he can have another nebulizer treatment at 9 pm, and then early in the morning. My husband and I rushed over to the vet before they closed so we could spend some time with him. My husband picked up a pre-made salad from a local grocery store that would have been large enough to feed our whole herd so he could have a snack before he went to bed.

I was really worried when I first spoke to the vet because she's normally very positive and encouraging.  This time, she painted a very bleak picture.  After seeing Reese after his first nebulizer treatment, he did seem a bit better. He ate a lot of the salad that we gave him, and he even chirped a bit for us.  Even though they were closed, the vet let us stay there with him for a while. We really appreciated that.

We don't think he's even a year old yet. This is so unexpected.

Meanwhile, Chakalaka is still hanging in there. He does well as long as the critical care keeps coming, but as soon as I stop, the grams keep dropping. Reese's roommate Donovan lost a tooth two days ago, so we're going in Saturday for her to even out his smile, and Twinkie's benign cyst on her backside seems to be growing.

So far, this has been a rough year. I hope things get better soon.  Thanks for listening...I need to go give Chakalaka his critical care now.

ME in New Smyrna Beach