I have a 2 month OOP joey currently trying to recover from HLP, low blood sugar and severe dehydration. A little history to inform you. We had 4 gliders. 2 males, 2 females. Both males fought incesantly as did both females so we divided them into pairs, all was harmonious. We were feeding BML
diet. Each pair produced one joey each, wonderfully healthy. This January we obtained 2 additional gliders both males,
bonded brothers. We kept them on the
diet they were on and changed our gliders over to their
diet. It was a well known
diet, the gliders seemed to prefer the new
diet, so we kept it. In March we moved and purchased a house. The 2 male brothers passed away suddenly and sadly, we figured it was the stress of the move. They were 6 months old. We discovered that our females were yet again expecting joeys. One female had a single female joey and the other had twin girl joeys. While nursing they were all the wonderful healthy happy joeys we wanted. At between 6-7 weeks old they started emerging from the sleeping pouch to explore and eat the
diet with the adults. The single female joey seemed to have a slight limp on one of her back legs. 2 weeks earlier we had to pull her father out of the cage as he had begun attacking all the females visciously, we thought maybe he had hurt her. Took her to
vet nothing found wrong. No blood work up was done as she was eating, drinking and playing happily. The only tail tail sign at that time was her tail was not as groomed as it could have been. Brought her home and sadly a week later she was dead. The twin girls we still with us. One emerged from the sleeping pouch and would exlore and the other would peek out from the pouch and crab at anything that moved. MAybe she just wasn't ready to explore yet. We noticed that her tail began to have the signs of not being as groomed as it should, but she had wonderful parents who we would watch bring food to the pouch for the joeys to eat, very attentive parents. The twins reach 8 weeks and Daddy still baby sits them in the pouch while Mommy goes and eats first. Wake up and go to retrieve dishes and found one of the twins on the bottom of the cage in seisures. Cold to the touch and matted fur. Scoop her up she was severely dehydrated so began with 0.1ML pedialyte every 5 min, call hubby home from work(he works over an hour away). Keep her warm and offer liquids. The siesures began to ease. Having longer periods between episodes. Hubby gets home and we rush her to the
vet, we have an emergency
vet who does treat gliders. Thankfully she had just joined our emergency
vet hospital as the only
vet who does see gliders doesn't have an emergency service. She was diagnoses with HLP, low blood sugar and severe dehydration. Calcium injection was given and the
vet gave us 4 more doses to administer at home. She was given a high percentage of NOT surviving the night. Stay up with her all night still giving pedialyte every 20-30 min as she was given sub-q fluids at the
vet as well. She was up to 0.2ML of pedialyte. She survived the night. She started taking more pedialyte and was up to 0.5ML every 30 min, kept her warm with a hot water bottle in her hospital bed. I tried food later that day and she refused but would still readily drink the pedialyte. Up to 0.7ML now every 40 min. Offer some food mixed with the pedialyte she began to drink it. Offered the food/pedialyte mixture every 40 min and gradually increased the amount of food mixed with pedialyte. By the early evening she was eating food melted to room temperature and given by syringe. I sat up with her on my chest giving her warmth and comfort as best I could. Finally she urinated that evening a rather large large puddle on my shirt which I was happy to allow. She had a small bowel movement that was hard, tiny and black. Her second evening home administer calcium shot and offer syringe of food and syringe of pedialyte every hour. Sat up with her all night allowing her to sleep on my chest as I did the first night. Morning of the third day she had a very nice bowel movement soft, well formed and about 1/2 inch long, wonderful sight. Go out and get ingredients for Joey glider formula from Ruth's glider page with puppy formula to get more calcium in her. Figured she was as week as a newborn so she could use all the help she could get. She now tried to groom herself and will groom for short bursts of time as her energy is still low. Her fur is starting to have that nice clean look to it. We looked at the attempt to groom as an improvement. This is her 3rd day and she has great control over her tail today and keeps it fiercly curled around her when she sleeps, we took that as a sign of improvement as she had very little tail movement before. She still can't walk and has a hard time holding her head up. I offered her a small feeding dish of food and she was actually licking it up on her own. She couldn't hold her head up out of the formula so I supported her under her chest to allow her to eat yet keep her nose from smothering herself in her food. She eats about 1/2 teaspoon of formula in a sitting now about every 2 hours. I get little cat naps inbetween feedings. She had her third shot tonight but didn't seem to want to move out of her warm hospital bed which is a small tub with lid(holes drilled for vent). 2 inches of fleece on the bottom, one of my t-shirts to snuggle in and a hot water bottle on the side wrapped in fleece. She sleeping more comfortably now it seems as her breaths have lengthed and deepened, she had panting shallow at the begining. She seems to be keeping more of her body heat in tonight. This is still the 3rd night and she received her 3rd shot of calcium. She still won't chew anything as she seems to have problems chewing so she is on a liquid/semi-liquid
diet. Tonight she doesn't seem to want to move and I have gone back to syringe feeding her and she sleeping alot today.
The
vet said I should get something called Calcionate it is a liquid calcium. I have looked at walgreens(drugstore), pet stores and infant areas and can not find the liquid calcium. Pills, tablets and chews are everywhere but no liquid.
Is it too soon to get my hopes up that she will pull through? If she does pull through will she fully recover or be a special needs glider? The
vet said her brain will need time to recover from the seisures. Is there anything else I can do for her at this time? Sadly we have also noticed that the other twin is starting to have a tail that is not as groomed as it should be and is spending more time back in the sleeping pouch. I don't know if this is
diet related or stress from the move still. We have been moved in for almost 3 months now. Out of the 3 joeys born under this
diet we've lost one and almost a second with the third showing signs the others did. We are changing our
diet back to BML to see if that is the cause.
Another note. The only yogurt I could find that actually stated "live active cultures" was a soy based organic infant yogurt, Stonebrook or Stoneyfields one of those names. It did state on it "Helps in the absorption of calcium", but with all the controversy on Soy I don't know rather to feed it or not. At this time I am feeding it since I don't have any alternate yogurt.