My two little boys might die..

[Lai]

What a day to find out such a horrible thing! :( Two of my greatest loves, sugar gliders named Tobias and Dominick, have a crippling disease called HLP (Hind Leg Parlysis). Tobias can hardly move his hind legs at all, and just drags himself along with his hands. Dominick is better off and can use them, but it's still very obvious he's suffering as well.

The disease comes from severe calcium deficiency, which confused me since they always get a heap of yogurt that's kept all the sugar gliders very healthy in the past. I did a little bit of thinking, and it was obvious. Their cagemate, Trinity, gets up first every night, is fat, and moves perfectly find. Yogurt is one of their absolute favorite food. Yes, that's right, for months Trinity has been eating ALL of their calcium source. Now the two little boys are unable to walk right, have small feet compared to their hands, and if it continues getting worse they'll die. Tobias is so bad off he might be crippled for life, never able to fully use his hind legs again, and will become a special needs glider because of my inattentiveness.

I'm doing everything I can for them, and there's nothing the vets would be able to do but give them calcium shots, which work just as well if not worse than simply feeding them calcium rich foods... and not only is my father enemployed, but I spent all my "vet" money getting them neutered. We're feeding them Ensure and yogurt, which should do it, but if they're not better in a few weeks we're going to take them in--financial situation or no. I've even made them a new toy from white beads and feathers, with all of my love and well wishes.

I suppose I'd just like to ask for your energy and support. This is one of the hardest things in my life I've had to bear, seeing them struggle along like this. :( I feel so horrible, I've always been so careful with my babies..

[Hoot]

(((Lai))) I can tell you're upset! Keep feeding Tobias and Dominick the yogurt and Ensure and make sure Trinity isn't getting it all. Do your best and maybe it will have a good effect that can turn this around.

Sending some love and energy for strength and calm to you and your family - including your sugar glider babies.

[Tea Leaf]

Sending energy and light to you. May Tobias and Dominick heal to best of their abilities, may they find what they need for healing to occur. You, Tobias and Dominick will be in my thoughts. *Hugs*
Blessings
Tea Leaf

[Linx]

**********hugs. I am so sorry.

[Pesha]

I am sending your loves energies and some love and hugs for you hun. May The Goddess bless you all.

BB
DS.

[Old Witch]

Energy to your babies........and don't be to hard on yourself...........

[AquariusWolf]

(((((((((Lai)))))))))))))) I am so sorry! Sending you some positive energy! :hugz:

[morrigen]

You and your babies are in my thoughts. I hope everything turns out alright.
Keep the love flowing to them...you're a great mom.
(Sugar gliders....aaawwww)

[Copperaven]

I had to go look these little guys up, I had never seen one and now I know why, California, enough said

they are adorable, and the calcium does seem to be a huge issue

sending lots of warm fuzzy energy your way, hope everything works out

[Flar's Freyja]

What they all said. Prayers and energy for all of you.

[BrenaSidhe]

---Poor little sugarbabbies---

---Maybe in the future try making them some high calcium kibble or healthy muffins... Just something that might stay in the cage, that wouldn't be eaten up right away...
Not real sure what sugarbabbies eat, but I had a similar feeding/health issue once with baby racoons... They did fine as real little ones, but when they became older toddler-cooneys 2 of the 3 became sickly and almost died, while one was fat and sassy...
At least your vets know what the problem is, hopefully it can be turned around... In the racoons case they didn't know, all they said was that they needed a high fat/high protien diet and tried peddling their intensive care cat food off on me at $10.00 per 3lb bag... There was no way, that would of been one days munchins for coons, and they'd still been foraging for more...[kind of like the calcium shots]...

---I went nuts in the kitchen, adapting a high fibre muffin recipie that was given by the childrens hospital... high fat, high fibre, and loaded with nuts/raisens/dates/eggs and milk... I basicly just made teaspoon sized drop cookies and cooked them longer at a lower temp...
Result being little rocks, dunno if your little guys would eat something like that or not, but the coons loved um...

---Also mixed dried milk with honey and grits, made a very thin sloppy porage and put pureed apples in it... They loved it and it took a while to eat, as they fished everything up with their hands... as the stuff got cold , it would sort of glop togeter a little, deturmined little bratts, thay ate it all...

---Calcium/salt licks, not hugely popular with the coons but they would taste them here and again, if it's there , they'd taste it...
Don't know how much they helped but I tried anything I could within reasonable afordability...

---If nothing else see exactly how much calcium is ok per day and boost the yogart with some crushed calcium tabs... Then just feed them sepretly the boosted yogart, to make sure one or the other isn't getting overloaded...

---Good Luck, I know it's hard to have specialty babbies and have things go wrong...

[malltynos]

sending good wishes and energy to you and your babies...

[71Beetle4Rio]

Lai, sorry to hear about your babies sweetie, I know what you're going through, I just lost my Glider (BeeBee) this Winter. You're doing good, you can also give them fresh veggies that are high in Calcium. You need to get them to a vet as quick as possible to have them checked. If you have any questions feel free to PM, my Wife and I used to own a pet store plus we have a friend who's a USDA licenced Glider breeder. I hope everything turns out ok, sending some postive vibes your way.

Rio

Emergency Vet Fund for Gliders (http://www.gliderhealth.com/money/evf.html)

Glider Diet, Highly Recommended (http://www.sugargliderinfo.com/NutritionAndDiets/leadbeat.html)

[Lilyraine]

I hope they get better soon. As well as healthy food give 'em some love too!

[Faery-Wings]

Good luck with your babies. I hope that they pull through this. Lots of energy to all of you.

[amberwolf]

sending positive healing energies to your babies I hope they get better really soon .

[Lai]

Thank you much for all of your well wishes and energies, everyone. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. :fpraise:

Both boys did very well last night, but it's become obvious that Tobias is much worse off than Dominick. He hardly can move on of his legs at all, but for some reason the other seems a little better off. He can still grasp but it looks like he can't really bend them or move them very well at all. Dominick can move them a little and grasps well, but it's obvious he's struggling too. They drank all of the Ensure I gave them and ate most of their food, so I'm hoping in a few days they'll start playing around.

I didn't sleep at all last night I was so worried, and noticed that Tobias only moved around to get food and water every once and a while. Dominick did the same, only played around every once and a while too.

We have lots of suggie vitamins for them, so along with the yogurt I mixed in some Vionate and RepCal to get the calcium up even higher. I think at this point they're so deprived calcium overdose is a joke... but in a week, just to be safe I'm going to cut down the vitamins a little if they're walking any better.

Rio- Thank you so much for those links! We've tried anything from Leadbetter's to Zookeeper's before, though, and they refuse to have anything to do with it. Taking away their fresh food to get them to eat it only succeeded in them starving themselves. :rolleyes: I will check into that vet fund, though, if we do end up taking them in. I would just take them in right away regardless, but I have to convince my father they're not "just being lazy'. :( He hates spending money on the animals.

Again, thank you so much for everything, and I'll be sure to update everyone on what happens to these little guys.

[Abrashea]

Hi Lai,
How old are your boys and what diet are they currently on, how long have they been showing these signs?

Depending on how far it has advanced, HLP can be reversed.
Charlie H from WSGN writes:
Baby Boy, a
rescue we got from Mississippi had HLP that had advanced to the stages
that he had a spinal seperation. He did not have use of his back legs at
all. After xrays revealed the spinal seperation as well as the loss of bone
density, we were advised to euthanize him. Putting a glider down is a last
resort with us. So far we have not had to do that. We had the vet give him
an injection of neocalglucon and started giving him oral dosages at home.
Baby Boy had also started to chew on his feet and chewed off some of the
toes on both front and back feet. We gave him pain medication for a couple
of days because of the mutilation and put an e collar on him.
We have now had him for about three months and unless you watch him
very closely, you cannot tell that there was ever anything wrong with him.
He will never have full use of his back legs due to nerve damage with the
spine seperation. But he has recovered to the point that he can live a good
life. We have a little female cage mate with him and he is very protective of
her. He has even tried to mate, but I don't think it was effective.
Our vet was shocked by the recovery that he has made. Guess the main
thing is to know your gliders and check on them every day. The sooner
you get them the medical help they need the better for them.

It is very dangerous to self diagnose...gliders ned to go to the vet once a year anyway so they might be due for a visit. The Vet Fund is set up by Tom Havens from GliderCENTRAL, and Peppony from wsgn (worldwidesugarglidernetwork.com) along with me are starting a fund for rescues but we would all like to help you out in this matter, for sure, if you need that kind of help.

Do you have any wheels? I sell wodent wheels but get them wholesale and would love to donate one to you and your two boys...exercise can help as well, and gliders love wheels.

You mention ensure, are you using Darcy's Diet? I dont know how much you know about gliders and diets, but darcy's diet is a great diet and may hlp as well, as it has calcium supplements in it...Darcy's diet was developed by Donna Fritz., a glider owner and wildlife rehabilitator in New York. It was approved by a Cornell University exotic veterinarian, and has been successfully in use for several years. While it was developed when her glider, Lord Darcy, was ill, it has been used with hundreds of healthy gliders with success.

here is the recipe for Darcy's Diet; this is what I use for all of my gliders and the rescue I get in...It is also the #1 recommended diet by me when I adopt gliders out to new homes...if you havent tried it, it is pretty simple...

Ensure To one can of Light or Regular Ensure** (any flavor but chocolate) add 3/8 teaspoons of Calcium Carbonate (I use Ruger's, a human-grade pharmaceutical powder.)
Optional: 1/4 tsp acacia gum

Nightly (ingredients are for one glider)

1 Tablespoon of the Ensure mixture , (more or less) iin a bowl *
various fruits & veggies, emphasis on variety and moderation. (No large
amounts of any one thing)
about a tablespoon of protein source per glider (amount depends on what it is.
Chicken or duck meat - about one tablespoon per glider; Crickets - live, frozen or freeze-dried (up to two tablespoons would equal one tablespoon measured out) Also wax worms, mealworms, egg.
Optional:
Mix about a pinch of Nekton for Sugar Gliders powder in about 1-2 Tablespoons of fruit juice
Zookeeper's Secret - a few kibbles per glider into the nest for
daytime snacking, along with grapes or apple chunks or such. They also get plenty of live apple branches).


* put the Ensure mixture in a bowl, not a water bottle, as the calcium will clog the opening).

** Sustagen iis the European brand name

You can find the Zookeeper's Secret here:
http://sugar-gliders.com/zookeepers-secret.htm

you might want to get some mealworms or crickets and sprinkle some glidercal or Repcal...or the vitamins you use would work too on them :)

:colorful:

we are all praying for your babies!!! :smoochypo :heartthro

[Lai]

Abrashea, I'm pretty sure I recognize you from WSGN! I'm a member there, but have been lurking quite a bit as of late. My username on there is "Lainyle"... perhaps I should go and post about my boys over there, too, for more advice? You'd think I'd have done that to begin with! :lol:

I do know Donna; we're good friends, so much so that my book is dedicated to her. :D They have not been on Darcy's diet, but we're just now trying to switch them on over to it. Previously we had been improvising to fit one of the glider's (Trinity) pickiness. She will not touch anything but fresh food. When we first got our suggies, they had been on the Zookeeper's diet. Our diet had been working well for over half a year now, but now that the two boys are living with her she had apparently stealing all of their yogurt so thus depriving them of calcium. Now we've got them very nearly on the Darcy diet, only they still won't touch the Zookeeper's and we have yet to buy Nekton.

I'm want to switch over our other pair as well as my brother's glider to Darcy's diet now, but I'm hesitant to do so with the pair since Sprite has two joeys in the pouch. They always have handled change very well for sugar gliders, though, so I might just start slowly offering it to them.

We do have mealworms, since Sprite eats a ton of them when she's got joeys. :hehehehe: We're now using Vionate and RepCal for vitamins.

My mother and I really want to take them to the vet, but my father wants to wait a week and see if they get any better. He says that "they're just being lazy". :flamer: Once we take them in, I'll worry about the bill afterword.

Both of them did very well again last night, drank all of their Ensure, and had a better appetite than last night. I'm going to start keeping track of their weight, and keeping an eye on them as often as possible.

EDIT: Almost forgot! They were OOP late October, and have been showing these signs of sickness for around a week. It was just three days ago that it got really scary, where they could hardly walk.

[Abrashea]

"Sprite has two joeys in the pouch."
Pointing at my signature...LOL...what a great name!

Ohhh, so they are still very young...hun, again...I cant stress a vet visit enough...if you post on WSGN they will tell you the same thing...
Im glad they are doing better, though...very glad.

I'm at work now so Im not supposed to be using the computer for this kinda stuff...

get back on WSGN and post!! LOL Would Love to see you there...

I dont remember your screen name, LOL...probably b/c you never post :lol:

well I will post more on here tonight...gotta go!!

-Abra

[MoonDust]

healing energy sent for your babies!

:hugz:

[Old Witch]

Healing energy renewed for the babies.......