Oh my, I'm so sorry. What a stressful, heartwrenching thing to go through, for both you and Terry. He was definitely a fighter.
I really cannot find the words to express how thankful I am for you and what you did. There are not many people left in this world that would even care enough about a little hurt parakeet to even feed him or give him water, let alone take him in and rush him to several vets, make him a hospital cage, and then to OK an almost $500 procedure to give him his only chance at survival, well this took a special person with a big heart. I hope you know how rare it is to find a person like you in this world, and I hope you know how much I look up to you and admire you, and I can promise you that this post is going to be FLOODED with people posting in tears...
As far as trying to save Terry, yes, you not only did everything you could and your avian vet did everything he could, but you both went far above and far beyond...As I said in my prior post I am 37 years old and I got my first pet English budgie at age 6, he was bred by my mom and hand-raised by my mother and myself. He lived to be 18, and I started breeding and raising my own baby budgies at 16 and continued up until the beginning of last year. So I have a very good understanding of budgie anatomy, physiology, and medicine. They are very small, they have little blood content, and they have very small airways and respiratory systems. All of this makes any and all anesthesia and surgery very difficult, as blood loss and breathing issues during the anesthesia are commonly responsible for their deaths. And I'm also willing to bet that the prior owner let this go for so long that the fractures in Terry's leg had become internally infected, and that infection had no doubt started to spread. So he had a mountain against him, but it was his only chance at living and the absolute correct choice was made by everyone.
Once again I cannot thank you enough for what you did for that little budgie, I promise you that not only myself and everyone here on the forum know how special what you did is, but Terry also knows...
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