# Nostril infection? Help!



## elinore (Jul 22, 2010)

My Maggie has been having a bunch of health problems lately. Last time I took her to her avian vet was late May to figure out some of her bigger problems, but I was also worried that she had trouble breathing. It turned out that she basically had a severely impacted booger blocking her left nostril that the vet was able to remove bit by bit with a sharp metal tool and a beak opener tool (her nasal pasage was so blocked up that he had to go at it from inside her beak). Removing the impaction helped immensely, but the metal tool left a little blood that formed a scab. I was worried about the scab but didn't want to try to remove it or anything for fear of making it worse, so we just waited till it fell out naturally a week ago. When I got home tonight however, and took her out of her cage for her usual post-work snuggle, I was struck by a strange smell. I brought her into bright light, and immediately noticed that her left nostril is swollen and there is yellowish, runny discharge plugging it up. It's obviously infected.

I'm not really sure what to do now, or how worried about this I should be. I have another appointment with the vet for July 8, but I live 4 hrs away where there is no other vet that I could take her to for an emergency like this, if this is an emergency situation. Is there anything I can do for her immediately? Should I be trying to get ahold of her vet and off of work to schedule an emergency trip? Is this something any old vet could give me a prescription for antibotics for, without needing an avian vet? I really have no clue how to handle this. Anybody have any advice? 

I tried to take some pictures to show the plugged up nostril. The first picture is of the runny icky stuff I was able to wipe off on a tissue. I tried getting a good close-up of her poor nose, but I didn't want to use the flash on her too much. The goo is runny and very nasty smelling and yellowish. I'm sure I would have noticed this during our morning snuggle (it's definitely giving off that distinctive "infection" smell), so I believe it must have developed sometime during the day.


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## MeanneyFids (Aug 24, 2010)

if its smelling i would get her to a vet asap. especially since its involving the respiratory system. if that gets worse she may not be able to breathe right and might do more damage. get her in soon, but try your best to find an avian vet.


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## elinore (Jul 22, 2010)

My current plan is to give the vet's office a call first thing tomorrow. Maybe he can give me some guidance as to what to do. If it's an emergency I'll have to call in sick and drive her to the vet's office. Unfortunately for us, there are no avian vets anywhere near us in the frozen north of Wisconsin, so we have to go 4 hours to UW-Madison's Vet Hospital for her vet care. 

It kind of seems to look better than it did a few hours ago, but that could be wishful thinking. I don't want to chance anything with her, and I'm worried that her other conditions could make her immune system weaker than it should be. The vet did run tests on the nasal goo that he pulled out in late May, and those came back clean. The current infection doesn't seem to bother her, and there is no swelling of her nostril as there was in the week after she had the nasal goo picked out. Still, I'm going to be giving the vet a call first thing in the morning. My poor little girl has far too much to deal with as it is!


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