# King with Cancer in arm



## chezd3 (Oct 8, 2008)

Hello! I have a pet King Pigeon Jan who appeared to have hurt her wing and after an X-ray at the vet, she has cancer. It is high up in the base of her wing pit and the only way to remove it is to remove her wing. That would not guarantee it is gone and her other wing and appeared to show small signs of cancer as well. She is feeling good and not showing any signs of poor health, except her one wing is hanging a bit lower and she can not fly well.

I wanted to post up to see if anyone had any experience with any situation like this, what did you do and what was the quality of life for your pij?

Thank you for any thoughts you may have.

Cheryl


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## abluechipstock (Nov 26, 2010)

i haven't had a pigeon with cancer but i had 2 chickens that got big tumors one on its wing and the other on it's chest, it's weird because i got both of them from the same hatchery and they were both speckled sussex, anyway the tumors eventually killed them, the tumors like any cancer take a ton of their energy away and keep getting bigger, i personally would put her down or let nature take its course, having wings amputated and then the bird dies anyway seems cruel to me, i'm also a nurse and see patients die all the time from cancer, it makes me angry that the doctors string these poor souls along saying we'll get this under control with just some radiation and chemo and it's already has metasticised to other organs, i watched my pap go through it, he was so sick from the chemo, thank God he decided to stop treatments when it went to his brain, hospice was awesome, you could do your own hospice care with pain meds for the poor bird, anyway sorry about your pigeon


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## Quazar (Jul 27, 2010)

chezd3, difficult one this, but the way I see it is, if the bird was in the wild with this, it would continue to survive the best way it could until it succumbed to the disease, or any other ailment that it incurred while its body was trying to fight the disease. The downhill process would accellarate as the pij got weaker & eventually died or became prey to a predator.. 
As you say, amputation will not nessesarily rid the disease, but there is a chance it might. (No chance if you dont)
There are others on the forum who have handicapped pij's who will probably chip in, but their quality of life need not suffer just because they cant fly, and it will probably live longer and happier than if you did nothing.
The fact that this bird is not wild, already gives it that better chance as you can monitor its progress and it is not in danger from predators. 
If the amputation doesent stop the disease, sadly you will have to face the same descision again, but if theres even the slightest chance it might, then it will live, and can live happilly with the flightless handicap and (like handicapped humans) a few modifications to its living quarters.


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## chezd3 (Oct 8, 2008)

Thank you so much for your thoughts! I appreciate them very much as I choose the best possible option for Jan. I will update this link. Right now she is not showing any sing of pain and is having a good time with her mate, preening, kissing and playing with hay. This hen has already had already had surgery from being egg bound and a full hysterectomy. We also had an X-ray from April 2010 and there were only tiny signs of the bone cancer we can see now, so it has been slow growing. 

Thanks again and I will update more as available.

Cheryl xo


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## Charis (Feb 11, 2007)

Hm...this doesn't make sense to me. Did the vet do a biopsy of the lump?


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## chezd3 (Oct 8, 2008)

It's not a lump, it's bone cancer. It's surrounded by fluid or blood, we did try to drain the area, and just got a dark dark blood. So we thing it has a big blood source as well.


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