Any new new? Hope all is well.

Okay, just how weird are we glider people? I am going to post a picture of the poop that Piper presented me with tonight, and I bet a bunch of you will look at it!

As many of you know, my hubby is not "into" the gliders. He had just gone to bed when I was tending to Piper (giving meds, checking hydration level, disinfecting wheel, cleaning out drop pan so I know all the new poops, disinfecting water bottle and food dish, feeding her, etc.) and I saw this nice, big, FORMED poop! I ran into the bedroom with it on a tissue and asked him if he wanted to see her poop (yes, I was kidding). He just kinda rolled his eyes and shook his head. I said, "I think I'll take a picture of it and post it for everyone to see!" He just said, "Okay, whatever."

I'm not kidding myself that she's out of the woods yet. It seems that every night I see signs that she's getting better, then every morning she does something to make me think she's worse. But at least I know she's not only producing brown water poop like I found in the cage bottom this morning. She is still eating, playing and staying hydrated without forcing fluids or subQing too.

haha..we all used to the poo

I gotta say, we might be considered wierd, but so what, when you've been half sick with worry about these little ones any kind of sign of improvement is worth celebrating! I know just how you feel, when my little choco was having a horriable time with the "runny-wattery" pooh, (almost 4 months of it) I was just sick over it all. I'd pray for hard poop, soft poop, semi soft, did't matter just so it wasn't watery the day a soft poopie came, I called my husband in to look, well you can imagine the looks............!Once it gets like it looks in the pic don't get to discourage if it goes back and forth runny, formed,try and keep her as stress free as you can. It seemed like whenever choco was stressed his pooh turned soft. My vet said that it can take up to 3 months for the intestinal tract to regain all the necessary elements inorder for it to go back to normal functioning.
Keep up the good work! (I wouldn't frame it though)

Wowzer! Now THAT's a poopoo to be proud of!! Did you measure it? hehe J/K

Glad to ummm, SEE she has a good poopy! Yay! I'm praying for her to get better fast!

I'm totally lost on the yeast thing here, soooo, if we drink beer, does that mean we would be healthy or what? No, I don't drink but would drink one if it would help!

Nice looking poop you got there!! I beleive you can get Benbac at Petco also. It comes in 3 little vials. They seem to have a different one in each animal section.
Keep up the good work you are a great Glider Mommy. Piper you get better and stop making your Mommy worry so much.

4 posts and 12 views of the poop pic, lol... I can only imagine what non suggie lovers think about us, lmbo... Birds of a feather, ya know? I think hubby would have me committed for that, but then again, I won't let him move the suggies heater, and noone can use "their" blender either, lmbo..

Well, as I was afraid of, there was a puddle of poo in her cage bottom this morning after last night's nice formed one. I'm feeling very discouraged. This weekend I'm going to stop the meds and hope for the best, since the metro doesn't seem to be helping and may be keeping her gut irritated.

Worse yet, Peepers had a soft poo this morning. I'm hoping it was just because when I went to dinner last night with her in my bra, I gave her a small piece of tomato from my salad. It may have had a little vinaigrette on it. But my heart sunk when I saw that this morning. Then I really examined the bottom of her cage and there were others that looked a little suspicious but I couldn't tell because they had already dried up. I know she's been having normal ones too, (although a little small) because there have been 3 or 4 on the bottom of her wheel each morning.

Keep us in your prayers.

good luck with all that. Try not to worry to much over the weekend. And if you need me, well you know where I am. Ill be at fiesta texas all day tommorow, but I should have my mobile phone on me if you decide you need a sitter. I think they will be fine overnight though.

The watery poops did completely become eliminated in my rescue btw, and that was while she was still on meds. Im not sure what that is an indicator of, just letting your know.

At the same time, I find that she goes on and off eating every few nights, but over all she has gained 30% in weight since I got her! She was a skinny frail little thing, now she is robust, and pregnant! aaaah! At least her bugs are all cleared up. At least thats what my fecals keep telling me. At least I get the opportunity to run them all the time since I work there and it dosen't cost me anything.

Point is, if you need anything let me know. -e

Thanks so much, Elizabeth. I forgot to call you back, but I did find someone to come check on them for me, and she works in a vet's office too, although she's not a tech. She lives right over there by you off of Balcones, and her daughter is my daughter's best friend.

Did you say it took a while before your little rescue started getting better, or was it just a few days? Was she just on metro? Dr. Tristan (Peggy's vet and a friend of Dr. Echols) said he seems to have his success in killing trichs go from about 60% to about 89% by adding Panacure to the metro. If going off the meds doesn't settle her down after a few days, I may want to try that.

I talked to Dr. Echols earlier today, and to be honest, it really made me feel more worried. He keeps going back to the liver thing, and he even said (I think, if I understood him correctly) that there were a lot of gliders whose symptoms were gastrointestinal, but after they were gone, necropsies showed liver failure as the cause of death. So we were talking about doing blood work, but I couldn't get a clear picture of how it would be treated if he was able to get blood, and if it showed liver or kidney problems, or whatever. It sounded like that would just lead to more tests, but I don't know how they would treat something like that. So I'm hesitant to do a $189 test that sounds like it would just lead to more expensive tests before MAYBE we'd end up with some kind of answer, but even then maybe no cure.

On the positive side, Piper is still gaining weight and growing. She's 14 weeks old now, I think, and she's gone from 70 to 76 grams in the past week. Interestingly, Peepers also gained a few grams from her normal 82 grams this week.

One of my gliders has been on multiple antibiotics for UTI issues over the past five months and as a result he often has loose stool and once even had watery diarrhea. I make sure he gets extra water so he's never had a problem with dehydration. I always feed yogurt every night while he's on a course of meds. If he has a particularly soft bowel movement, I give him a bit of good quality cheese (NOT Velveeta or cheese singles- I like to use colby) and I also give him tiny pieces of a whole-grain bread. I began doing these things for my dogs and cats when they have diarrhea and my exoctics vet approves of me doing the same for my gliders.

While raising two active boys, I had many occassions to make medical decisions for them. It is really hard to resist doing tests, after all, the test might give some insight into the problem, some little crumb of info that might help us feel better about what we are doing to treat the problem.

But tests can have side effects also, and they cost...alot. Now, would I risk my families health over cost issues? Never! However, money spent on unnecessary tests is money that cannot be spent on other items that would enrich their environments and their lives.

So the trick is deciding what is necessary, and what is gee-whizz information. So my rule of thumb is this. If the results of the test are going give good information that will change treatment options and positively effect the outcome of treatment- do the test.

If the test is going to give great information, but will not significantly change the treatment options or the predicted outcome - dont do the test.

Diarrhea is a common side effect of the medication she is taking. Tomorrow is her last day on medication. Her diarrhea may resolve itself when the meds are withdrawn. Unless the results of these tests will give you information that is crucial to her recovery, maybe you should wait and consider them if she has any further issues that would indicate possible liver involvement. Kind of a do it now or do it later kind of decision, instead of a do it or not do it one. And if she recovers and grows and has no more health issues, you may never feel the need to run those tests.

Sending you prayers

Angel and The Suggies

Well I looked at the poop too.
With the gliders comming in here that have had health issues, parasites or just loose stools from the stress, it does take some time for them to get back to normal. With Sydney, it was about 3 weeks. With Roxy, about 5 weeks till the watery stools stopped. With Mariah, about 2 months, Sheila, about 8 months, and so many more gliders.
My vet is very conservative and I agree with him that we would only do blood work as a last resort. Instead we treat the symtoms and change what we need to until the gliders are well. Not eveyone believes like me and I understand that though.
Good news about the weight gain, thats a good sign.
Continued prayers for you and your babies. Please let us know how you are doing.
Angie

This is the first MORNING that I feel encouraged. I woke to the sound of ringing bells that told me Piper was up and playing. That wasn't that unusual because she's been feeling okay all along. She ate pretty well, also not that big a change. What was a change is that there weren't any smears of poo anywhere in the cage, including the wheel and the drop tray. Why am I encouraged by NO poo? I know when I have diarrhea, after it goes away, I'm kinda "cleaned out" for a while and don't go, so I'm thinking maybe that's happening to her.

Last night I didn't give her last dose of metro. I discussed it with the vet yesterday and he agreed it was a good idea stop the meds to see if the they were the cause. Usually the metro is a 5-7 day course anyway, so stopping on day 9 isn't like giving an abreviated course.

Also, Peepers had a small but normal and firm poop this morning.

Peeps, I really wish you could get those babies down here. You know there is nothing like a hands on thing, and I know that you all talked with Dr.T but I would love for him to be able to check out the girls as well.

Keep us posted and let me know if there is anything I can do from here.

Well, I thought I was going to have to make another "she's still the same" post, but I have good news! Piper had a normal poop today!

I hadn't updated this thread in a while. Up until today, I was getting very discouraged. Piper had her last dose of metro last Friday (6 days ago) and I was at first hopeful that she would get better when I took her off the antibiotics. But unfortunately, she just got worse over the weekend. Monday I was going to take another poop sample in but there wasn't anyone there at the vet's office to read it. So then I was going to take one Tuesday, but I couldn't get Piper to provide one (stingy girl!) during office hours. Then finally Wednesday I got just a little bit and took it in. It came out clean. No trichs, no nothing. I wasn't sure if that was good news or bad. I mean, how was I going to treat her when I didn't know what was wrong?

I talked with the exotic vet who looked at the fecal sample I brought in Wednesday. He didn't see anything unusual in the sample (except for the fact that it was liquid). We discussed blood work and he even admitted that it may not lead to a treatment for Piper, but would help gain more understanding about gliders in general. If the blood work suggested a liver problem, the next course of action would be to biopsy the liver. I said I hate to put finacial restrictions on this, but the reality is that I have to. The blood work alone would be $184, which isn't exactly out of reach if it would suggest a treatment, but I imagine a biopsy would be even more which gets harder. Aside from that, there is the whole invasive aspect of the tests.

So we left the idea of more tests and I asked him what his "gut" feeling (pardon the pun) was about what's going on. He said a food allergy or diet related thing would be his first suspicion. He suggested cutting out all dairy products first, which includes PML (because of the whey in the Wambaroo, I think?) and yogurt. He said Benebac is fine. Also, he suggested the BRAT diet (the one you use with your skinkids when they need a bland diet: B=Bananas, R=Rice, A=Apples and T=Toast but you leave the toast off with suggies) which AngieH also suggested the other night. So last night she had rice baby cereal mixed with water, Gatoraide and a little maple syrup along with apple slices and a small dollop of cooked oatmeal.

I'm going to keep giving her that stuff for the next few nights, then slowly start to introduce other foods to try and figure out what it is that set her off. Still keep us in your prayers that she keeps doing well and doesn't "rebound".

Pk, what great news! I hope she's back to "normal" soon!