I took Joe in to see Dr. Krupka about three weeks ago because his eye still hasn't gotten any better. I guess he doesn't really know what's wrong with his eye, but he doesn't think it's anything to worry about, it's just cosmetic at this point. It's not bacterial, not viral, not parasitic, who knows what it is. I also talked to Krupka about Joe's poop. You see, Joe has a lot of urine in his poop, and I mean a lot. He didn't like the sound of that, so we had some blood work sent away to check for any kidney, liver, etc. problems.
Well I finally talked to Krupka again this past week, and everything in Joe's blood work looks normal except for his albumin levels. Albumin is a blood protein, so this means that either Joe isn't getting enough, or he's losing too much. Sometimes it can be nutritional, but Krupka said that since he's on a very good diet, that he's pretty sure Joe's getting enough protein (he even gained 2 grams, yay!). His liver and kidneys also seem to be fine, the blood work would have shown otherwise. So he had been talking to some other avian vets, and has come to the conclusion that it's very possibly that Joe has intestinal lymphoma. In fact, he said he thinks Joe does have it. The only way to test for this though is to do a biopsy, and he said that even if it did come back positive, that there's no way he would do chemotherapy on a 25+ year old bird (who is only supposed to live to be 30).
I'm not sure whether I should really believe that he has cancer, but either way Joe is probably only going to live a couple more years. So nothing has really changed I guess, Joe is actually more active than I've ever seen him lately. I was brave enough to bring him downstairs (the cat's domain) and RolyPoly shows no interest in him at all! In fact, if I let Joe down on the floor he chases after RolyPoly, and she hides from him! It's hilarious. Joe gets down real low to the ground and runs as fast as he can at her, beak wide open.
But anyway. I put up some photos of Joe enjoying his downstairs time, including some bath time photos. They should be towards the end of the flock set.
