Simon Thomsett

Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles | Date: Sep 16 2008 | By: simonthomsett

The last week was taken up with Rosy, the Crowned Eagle. The operation on his eyes was just over a week ago, and although there has not been a miraculous overnight recovery of vision he is strong and healthy. Over the week, there has been much discussion regarding the odd mushroom-like protrusion coming out of both pupils. I wrote about this and included a picture on the blog last week. I wasn’t sure if it was the sort of news people would like to see or read about, but you’d be surprised at the responses, some of which were very technical. The blog is therefore a great tool for putting something “out there” and getting feed-back. With this in mind, this blog describes what medicine regime we are using and also what I see happening to his eyes in layman’s terms.

Drs Dan Gradin, Nonee Magre, Barry Cockar, and Chris Murphy believe that the main reason why Rosy’s recovery is delayed is by a growth of a protein called fibrin. It seems as though this fibrin is growing in response to the lens extraction and invading the anterior capsule. I have no idea if this gelatinous, seemingly more viscous goo is also invading the posterior chamber, behind the iris but suspect that the posterior capsule to the lens inhibits this. I was asked to put Pred Forte in the eyes, a medicine that inhibits excessive protein build up. This was increased to every two hours. He also has Maxitrol (general antibiotic and steroid to stop inflammation), Timolol (to decrease eye pressure) and Atropin eye drops (to open the pupil). All these have to be given at certain rates, to certain eyes throughout the day. Fortunately Rosy is now very tolerant of these drops. I can stroke the top of his head on one side and talk to him. He then tilts his head and after a few misses I can drop the fluid either onto his open eye, or in the rear corner of his eye. The other night I slept all night and woke up feeling very guilty. Rosy has to sleep in a large kennel at the foot of my bed, so that I can get up and do this during the night. Now that I understand the purpose of these drugs I can give them according to what I feel is best needed.

I took photographs of both of his eyes last night. In the right eye, the one that had been “Phaco’ed” the protrusion was rapid, clearly defined and now retreating, but with an opaque look about it. I think I can discern a double bubble look about it. The end result may be that it will settle like a bridge across the pupil and obscure sight. Or it may continue to retreat and clear. There are small red spots on the Iris that I take to be small blood vessels that have been bruised.

Rosy’s right eye (taken on 13th Sept)

By the 16th Sept, the growth had receded till it lies between the pupil. It seems to be distorting the pupil. You can clearly see the irregular nature of the pupil in the photograph. The eye has no pupil reflex now, and I assume that the fibrin is physically obstructing this process. It is also very opaque.

Rosy’s right eye (Taken on 16th Sept)

The left (the lens of which was irrigated out and took longer), had a diffuse ill-defined protrusion. It is now discernable and has stringy “floaters” within it. In addition, there are dark spots that have floated to the fore of the anterior chamber and settled on the inside of the cornea. I think I can see what looks like a 4mm long capillary blood vessel and a diffuse matrix that is coloured red around it, in the protrusion.

Rosy’s left eye (Taken on 13th Sept)

By the 16th, this had receded slightly and the dots lying on the inside of the cornea have elongated and appear to be being removed. Like the other eye there is no pupil reflex and the fibrin matrix is almost certainly bridging the pupil.

Rosy’s left eye (Taken on on 16th sept)

Both these growths appear to be declining in size and retreating down the pupil. I would guess that the different viscosity of the fluids, the hazy floaters and the shape of the mass would combine to leave a confused visual pathway. Refraction within the protrusion may be enough to invert the image or scatter the light. Rosy is not as blind as he was prior to the surgery. He does open his eyes and scan the world around him. I think he sees light and dark. But most of the time he keeps his eyes shut. He did jump at a hand being swept across hi face the day after surgery, but now he does not.

Dan suggested that little could be done until it all settled down. Once that happens he feels confident that either Rosy can see, or he might have to operate again to take out the fibrin coat. The way it looks today I feel that he will need this additional surgery.

I understand that the operation will be much quicker. Dan explained that a similar thing occurs with children. The fibrin tent that forms across the pupil simply needs removal. But the machine that does this cannot be transported.

I am sure that Rosy has the strength to tolerate a much shorter procedure again. He hasn’t haltered one iota from his normal dominant self. Yes he may have been a bit depressed the first few days. But at noon these days he calls out his territory call as usual. I have no feeling that I have finally asked too much of him. He hasn’t thrown in the towel. Neither shall we.

Tags: Cataract Operation, Crowned Eagle, Eye, Rosy

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Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles | Date: Sep 13 2008 | By: simonthomsett

Jim asked if I could explain why Rosy was given this name. Rosy is a male. He is about as male as you can get. I have grown so used to accepting Rosy as a male’s name that I cannot understand the muddle some people get into when they refer to Rosy as a “she”. Rosy was first called Rossy, after a lady with a similar shaped nose. The late Peter Davey found Rosy in the Aberdare National Park under his nest tree in 1977. Sam Weller, the manager of the Ark, and his friends that included Rossy (Spurway), went in the middle of the night in the pouring rain to pick him up.

No-one knew Rossy to be a male back then. He was kept in an aviary, about the size of an outhouse for nearly a year. When I saw him sitting in the back of the wire shed it was obvious he had one weak wing. The story of how I got there and ran away from school to do so is long and arduous. Suffice it to say I knew Rossy was male the moment I saw him, because females are so much bigger. I had a girlfriend with whom I had a hopeless crush back at school called Rosemary Swift. I called Rossy, Rosie. He responded to this name as he would to Rossy, and so it stuck. As I lost contact with Rosie and I then made the fine distinction of calling Rosie, Rosy, a popular brand of lavatory paper. When asked, I would say he was named after this brand, but the truth is out now.

It made no difference to me that Rosy was a female name. It was a tough world. Perhaps by giving so huge and formidable an eagle a sissy female name, he would end up mean and tough. Johnny Cash had a famous song: “A man named Sue”. It was a story of a father naming his son Sue, so that he would grow up a fighter.

Well Rosy grew up a fighter all right. He has put many into hospital, killed dogs, and frightened thousands with his fierce glare. Right now his attitude is still serving him well. I do not regret for a moment naming a huge male Crowned Eagle, Rosy.

Tags: Crowned Eagle, Name, Rosy

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 12 2008 | By: simonthomsett

Rosy sits outside right now eating contentedly on the lawn. He is not alone as Tim the Lanneret has come back after a few days out on his own, and sits on his perch about 10m away. Things are looking bright and fresh.

The rains broke 3 days ago, and with it came an end to the dry season. It is a harsh time, extenuated by the sudden prevalence of many hundreds of starved cattle that have been settled near to my house. They flatten the land and turned it within weeks into a dust bowl. The wildlife scattered and the water resources were limited only to the livestock. I will never be convinced, no matter how indoctrinated that livestock is good for wildlife conservation.

With the dry season comes irritability. As the drought proceeds, people become fractious. In truth, the immediate environment so dictates peoples lives that moods can swing from day to day because a lot depends upon the weather. At no other time is there more social unrest than when there is a drought. As if to prove the point, I was raided again by two thugs a few weeks ago who approached Jonathan and I armed with clubs and machetes. They turned away only when faced with a greater adversity. The pattern is obvious. I have learned through experience to associate cattle with insecurity.

The dry season is not, as many people think, the warmest. Tourists and film crews come specifically for the dry season assuming it to be warm with blue skies. But it is usually cool with grey days, but latterly there has been high winds and dust with a few clear skies. Suddenly the afternoons fell quite, and the temperature shot up. Heat and humidity rose to a point that made all on edge. Lone wildebeest stood staring at the ground for hours in the heat haze. Zebra herds stood still, chins on the back of friends. Vultures circled each noon over dead animals. We have seen droughts that kill thousands of animals. The birds sang, especially the Hildebrant’s Starlings. Stupid birds! Groups of birds formed and sat in the tops of trees and sang. Idiots! There was no way it was going to rain.

At mid day and in the afternoons, we sought out the shade. In the bird sheds, the temperature could have cooked bread. Girl (Rosy’s mate) and Mutt the Lammergeyer sit in enclosed sheds now. The temperature made them very quiet.

Would it end, or would it be another severe drought?

Over the last two weeks, the clouds gathered each day and threatened to burst. They were black and turgid with rain. The flat bottoms of rain clouds seem perfect and solid. Above them curl mounds of clouds that shoot over 20,000ft into the sky. The temperature soared and we all prayed. It never came. The wind blew it all away and the birds stopped singing.

But 3 days ago the rain started. Not a huge dramatic downpour, but light. That is good because hard rain on denuded soil destroys the land. Immediately all our moods changed. The birds sang again. They have only a few weeks to build nests and breed. Most do not succeed as this is the short rains, but they will try.

I heard my first Eurasian Bee Eaters this week, high up out of sight. They call in the new year. As soon as they arrive, I start looking out for other migratory birds. I saw my first 2 Eurasian Hobbies too, flying low against the high wind that carried rain. I would have overlooked them had Tim not been feeding on my fist and looked up. They look like him and the local small bird community let out a warning cry thinking they are in danger. Soon though, after they have seen a few dozen more, they will cease their warning cries as Hobbies at this time of the year are harmless. Eating only airborne insects in and near rain fronts.

As soon as the grass turns green, the cattle will go and with them the noisy herders. Their nightly shrieking and yelling has subsided too. Things will return to normal and the cheetahs will come back to hunt near my windmill on the hill.

I wonder what this house will look like when we have all left. But I am not that sad now and anxious to get out and away. I do love these plains but things have changed. Rosy is now the principle thing holding me back. It is ironic that it was he who started it all 30 years ago, and it is with him that this big chapter of my life will soon end. I do hope one day to pick up again with him and his mate Girl. Meanwhile I do not have the means to give them what they deserve.

Tags: Cattle, Drought, Migration, Rain

One response so far

Category: Cataract Operation for Rosy, Crowned Eagles | Date: Sep 10 2008 | By: simonthomsett

I wish that I could report a miraculous recovery. But it is not so. There remains the agonizing uncertainty and he has a long way to go before the eyes clear up.
I had remained in Nairobi at the Cockar’s house on Sunday morning and this allowed Drs Barry Cockar, Dan Gardin and Nonee Magre to check on him. Putting the eye drops and drugs into his eyes was easy. What was noticeable was the extensive cloudiness of the cornea and general disruption of the anterior portion of the eye (That which is forward of the Iris). His eye pressure was slightly high in one eye and twice as high as it should be in the other. Unpredictably the eye that took nearly three times longer than the eye in which the Phaco was used was the better one.

The drive home was not that bad as it was a Sunday. Nevertheless a good portion of it is off road driving behind very dusty trucks. Rosy hung onto the front seat and did his best to stay upright. But the experience is not good for a sick patient with very sensitive eyes. I hate this road, as it has not helped in getting animals to and from treatment for the last 4 years. We arrived home and he had a quite warm day being left out on his perch. He is surrounded by familiar sounds and evidently this settled him. That night, he did react to a hand being moved in front of him. He was able to track me as I walked by him a meter away. I was euphoric.

Rosy on his perch

On the Monday, I had hoped he would be better, but he was much the same. I stayed with him most of the day. Giving drugs to him now was a different story. Although quiet on his perch, the moment I start to attempt to apply a greasy ointment his head jerked back, and it all went across his face….not on his eye. Worse the process was in danger of injuring him. So I had to ask for Mwanzia and Jonathan to assist. The brute force way is very upsetting to him, and I have to weigh up the benefits as opposed to the trauma sustained in the struggle. I wish there was an easier way. Applying the drugs 8-10 times a day makes pulling the sheds down and sending the materials for construction at Naivasha a tough task. Sarah Higgins, the new “owner” of Rosy and Girl desperately needs to know the outcome of Rosy’s progress, as the cost of building the new breeding shed is a huge factor to us. If Rosy cannot see, then there is no point in building the new shed and Girl his wife should be released, despite her age. Rosy would then spend the rest of his life in a smaller shed. His life would not be that bad, but it would be a sad thing to accept after all this effort.

Concurrent to this, I am moving all my furniture and equipment, closing down the house, releasing Tim the Lanner, working on setting up a Lammergeyer release, getting car log books sorted, getting a visa, fixing a broken car, and outfitting for a year safari around Africa. All must be near complete by the end of this week!!

Email and communication via the cell phone came to a halt on Monday. Nonee was driving all the way out from Nairobi to check on his eye pressure, and so I stayed at home. It turned out that her car too broke down, and she had to post-pone the appointment to Tuesday. I was so overwhelmed on Monday that I gave up on all else and focused only on Rosy. I think I am trying to do too much.
On Monday, he was uninterested in a dead rabbit I gave him. Even if totally blind he would happily eat a rabbit, but not now. As it was attracting flies I took it away and force fed him by pushing food down his throat. He was very angry.

In the afternoon he was able to feed on the rabbit alone. But a measure of just how blind he is was gained by looking at the pair of cheeky Slender tail mongooses that live in the rock pile in the garden. They came out and fed on the rabbit within 2 feet of him. Had he seen them, or even registered a blur, he would have done something about it.

I resorted to using the camera to take pictures of what looks like a protruding transparent globe that is emerging from the pupil. The photograph clearly shows this to be true in his right eye. The mass seems to distort the pupil too. The other eye there is a cloudy mass that lies just forward of the pupil. The distinct boundary of the “bubble” in that eye is not so clear. The cornea itself seems to be less cloudy. The eye diameter seems larger, and it looks like it is bulging slightly. The intraocular pressure could explain this although I am giving the special eye drops to reduce this pressure. Nevertheless the protrusion is not as bad as it was. I feel that there is post operative reaction in the eye, with a confusion of anterior and posterior eye pressure, and perhaps some damage to the retina following high intraocular pressure.

Rosy’s right eye

Dan phoned me on Monday and felt confident that this globular protrusion was fairly normal, but he would like to see it for himself. I include the picture here so that I can refer the doctors and specialist such as Dr Dan Gradin to it. (Another use for this blog!)
Today (Tuesday) Nonee drove all the way out to take his eye pressure. It is within limits. But she too noticed this strange protrusion and after conferring with Drs Dan Gradin and Barry Cockar, believed it was likely to be a result of fibrin coagulating. There are drugs that will help lessen this, which I shall get tomorrow. But Nonee was also disappointed in the lack of vision. We went over the procedure again and lamented the lack of equipment that would have allowed us to get a perfect dimension of the lens. But right now the lens is not the issue, it is the material that is being produced by the eye that is disturbing the visual pathway. Time will tell.

Laila and Paula have both asked that I keep the news updates going each day. I suspect Rosy’s progress will be slow, and I cannot think of too much to say. Paula said that I should be brave in asking for donations to continue. While we are all very grateful for the donation money received to cover the cost of the surgery, there are still outstanding settlements to cover costs of equipment and services. In addition comes the reality that Rosy’s post operative care and the building of their new shed will amount to at least some $3-4000, of which I would greatly appreciate any help. It was precisely these sorts of costs incurred during my latter tenure as a raptor rehabilitator that I failed to meet and obliged me to close down.

Tags: Cataract, Crowned Eagle, Operation, Rosy, Surgery

9 responses so far