Adam And Emily
When I first got my original gliders, I was unknowingly living in a basement with mold. It wasn't obvious, and I didn't even realize it until we moved that there was mold located in the drain under the washing machine.
It started with Adam. One day, I noticed that his entire cheek looked puffy, at first I thought it was his eye (it looked very much like the first pic in the post about the eye abcess. I rushed him to my vet and she promptly lanced it and drained the puss. She prescribed (i'm 90% sure) Baytril, for 21 days. She did phone consult on the case, however at the time I didn't have numbers, so I don't know who she consulted with. (the abcess on him was simmilar to the size of a baseball to us)
During the next week, I had to use gauze to press on the wound to remove the puss (as the vet reccommended). He was put back with his family, as he had joeys about to come OOP. I watched carefully for any signs of problems, but he healed very well and hasn't had any issues since (1.5 years). And just to note, the vet had initially recommended that I seperate him, but we discussed the issues that could arise since Eve had joeys coming OOP and she agreed that he should go back and be watched VERY carefully.
Emily's abscess came a few months later. Hers was in april. I noticed that she was eating a bit less over the course of a couple days... and I was paying attention, but not too concerned because she would mate when her joeys were about 2 weeks OOP... which they were. Then, one day I noticed that her face looked fuller, I was relieved and thought that it meant that she had started eating again... WRONG. The next afternoon, I looked in on her and noticed the wound immediately. I rushed her to the vet. Emily looked as if a nail had been hammered into her forehead. I have since learned that there is open space right there for the frontal sinuses. I brought her to the same vet that treated Adam, and she told me that she believed that Emily's wound was also a sinus infection. She had me seperated her from Oakley, since it looked like he had either opened the wound or cleaned it, and she didn't want him to harm her. She stayed with her twin boys... and i was babysitting as ofen as I could. I was VERY worried about her, since she had dropped 20 grams off her normal weight AND she had the twins to feed. But, Emily is a fighter, and she took excellent care of the boys, and she slowly gained weight herself. By the time the boys were 8 weeks old (I am fairly sure it was sooner) she was healed up and the boys were a normal size. I then put Oakley back in with her and they did great (the boys were moved to a seperate cage).
I called Val when I was having the issues with Emily, because I was afraid and I wanted to do the best by her. Per Val's advice, I did not use ointment on Emily. We moved just a couple days after Emily's abcess, and we have had no health issues since then (besides the rescues with parasites)
This is just a couple days after the issue, when it was still ugly:
This is when the healing of the skin was complete, and she went back to Oakley:
And this is recently, all healed up, and just a barely noticable scar/irregularity:
Wed Dec 23, 2009 1:55 pm
