serafina update

Oh boy. Um. I dropped little Serafina off at the vet this morning for her x-ray. I hate taking her in the truck. It must be so stressful and confusing for her. We have been feeling somewhat hopeful as a) she is still alive; and b) her blood tests came back negative for a bunch of bad stuff. The x-ray is the next step. Well. Dave just got a call from the doctor. It was bad news. :( She has a large mass in her abdomen and it's squashing against her lungs as well as her digestive track. It is actually taking up most of her lung capacity and that's why she's having breathing problems. They are not sure what the mass is, but it's most likely a tumor. On a bird as small as Serafina, they cannot operate to remove such a thing. It would kill her. So our options are: a) do a biopsy to find out if it is indeed a tumor. The actual process of the biopsy has a 75% chance of killing her on the spot. (so, um, NO biopsy.); b) give her a cortisone shot that *might* do something helpful or *might* not. However, you can only give a cortisone shot to a bird with a healthy immune system as the cortisone tends to have a negative impact on the immune system. So that would mean more blood work to find out if her immune system is looking strong and then seeing if the cortisone has any effect; and c) they offered to put her down. (um, again, as she has been eating and flying and playing and tweeting, which for some reason dave said the doctor cannot believe, this is a, um, NO.)

So our options are extremely limited… and possibly exhausted. It feels very, very sad. Thankfully, we are both in agreement that we want her to live out whatever life she has left at home with her flock. The Wogdog (and Terfle, who has been sitting and guarding her on the top of her cage) will be inconsolable if Serafina just disappears one day and so I'm hoping that if she happens to die in the cage with the other birdies, perhaps on some level they will at least understand why she is gone. Oh my. Ok. this is getting way too sad and I'm at work and starting to cry, so time to move on…