02/13/04

Contact ISGA Webmaster
 

"Hind Leg Paralysis"

a study in panic by Chris, Tina and 'Gizmo'

The Story

Recently, my wife and I discovered our Glider, Gizmo, lying on the bottom of his cage unable to move anything but his head and forelegs. Needless to say, we panicked. We picked him up, and loved him, both of us crying rivers as visions of injury and permanent paralysis played through our minds. We both have medical and biological backgrounds, and searching our brains for possibilities, found no hope for his situation, and thus began preparing ourselves for the inevitable. In a last ditch effort, we hopped onto the net and found exactly two references to this malady at Ruth Grove's Sugar Glider page and the Glider Information Network This gave us at least a little hope, and completely eradicated any ideas we had about putting Gizmo down, but the information was vague and erratic at best (no offense meant toward the authors, it's just that there isn't a lot of information out there about these guys). So, it is after the ordeal that we went through, and our subsequent journey toward enlightenment that prompted us to write this article, in hopes of educating owners, saving some people a lot of grief and most importantly, saving some precious little lives.

What we read from those two fateful articles told us that Gizmo was suffering from some sort of deficiency, either Vitamin-D, Vitamin-E or Calcium. Well, we feed Gizmo just about everything that all of the people and books recommend, and we were fairly confident that he was getting everything he needed nutritionally. Nevertheless, we ran out to the market at a little after midnight to find him some foods that were high in those essentials. We bought fortified milk for Vitamin-D and calcium, fresh nuts for Vitamin-E, baby foods that were high in various vitamins, and a whole smorgasbord of other goodies for him. We got home, and his condition was unchanged, so we fed him and loved him some more and he ate heartily, which stoked the fires of our hope for him.

We called around to many pet emergency clinics that night, but due to the absence of these creatures in our area, none of the vets around us even knew what one was, let alone what could be done for him. We were very reluctant to take him into a vet that didn't know what he was dealing with, especially after talking to my mother who has 3 Gliders, and had just lost one to the same condition a couple of days earlier. She took Houdini to a vet who was unsure of what to do for him, and the vet ended up giving Houdini a Cortisone injection on the chance he was suffering from a spinal injury. Houdini died a couple of days later from what was assumed to be pneumonia brought on by the weakening of his immune system by the Cortisone.

The next day, we made many phone calls to pet stores (including Reptile Solutions in Arizona) and vets both in and out of our area. We found a vet in Arizona that was familiar with Gliders and this condition, and he recommended a supplement and some form of meat (either hamburger, ground turkey or frozen adult mice). We went out and got some Reptical (a brand of vitamin and mineral supplement for reptiles), and began sprinkling it on his food, as well as on small balls of raw ground turkey. He continued eating well with the exception of the turkey, which he just tore into little pieces and flung around the room. Later that night, he began wheezing. This made us think of the pneumonia, and brought on a whole new set of worries. Gizmo also appeared to be a little bloated and his stomach was somewhat distended. We decided to take him in the following day to a vet that we found who worked on exotics, but mainly reptiles and amphibians. It seemed risky, but we felt we had to do something.

The Initial Diagnosis

The first vet looked him over, more out of fascination than examination, and decided that Gizmo needed an X-ray to rule out injury and be sure his G.I. tract wasn't full. After talking to all of the people we spoke with, the thought of a physical injury seemed pretty much out of the question, but we figured it couldn't hurt, just to be sure. Boy were we WRONG! The X-ray revealed that although his digestive tract was clear, Gizmo had fractured both of his hind legs! The vet said that surgery was possible, but he could not do it. So, sadly, we took Gizmo home, and began the search to find a vet that could do the surgery.

That afternoon we called several more vets and finally, miraculously, found an amazing vet that not only knew what a Sugar Glider was, but had actually treated several of them! A wave of relief washed over us, but we knew that Gizmo still wasn't out of the woods. We took him in first thing the next morning (the vet wasn't in the day before), and had him looked at. This new vet looked over the X-ray and examined Gizmo intensely, and contributed some of the information that is to follow. In order to make my rather long story shorter, I will summarize the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and maintenance below. I will also try to put in some tips on diet and nutrition for these guys, as my wife and I both have done enormous amounts of research via books, zoologists, vets, owner/breeders and the internet. Hopefully this will help anyone who finds this page to prevent this malady, or save the life of a loved one already afflicted.

The Real Diagnosis

Gizmo had developed nutritional osteodystrophy, or a decalcification (softening) of the bones due to a lack of nutrients. In this condition, the body does not have enough calcium and protein to perform its various functions, and begins to draw calcium from the only source it can: the bones. Bone material becomes fibrous and flexible as the calcium which keeps it hard is steadily removed. Once the bones reach a certain point, they no longer offer anything to resist the contraction of muscles, and the victim becomes effectively paralyzed. This condition is very grave because with this softening of the skeleton, comes other very severe complications such as: