Roseanne is a wild caught glider. I had her for about two years and earned her trust to where I could handle her as well as any of the babies that I had raised. One day I noticed a slight swelling on the right side of her face. I took her in to the vet right away. They could not even discern any swelling. It was in the earliest of stages. They examined her mouth looking for an abscessed tooth. They could not find anything even though I insisted that the right side of her face was swollen. A couple of days later she began having trouble eating hard foods. She could no longer shell a peanut on her own, and she just loved crickets but could no longer break the casing on them either.
     I took her back into the vet. This time they anesthetized her and took a really good look in her mouth. Still they could not find an abscessed tooth. At this point they began to be suspicious of renal disease. Supposedly one of the symptoms of renal disease in gliders is the inability to eat hard foods. They put her on a weeks regime of Baytril. Three days after we finished with the Baytril the right side of her face ballooned up. I called her vet and told them that she looked like someone whopped her upside the head and it stuck that way. I took her back in. This time they aspirated the swollen area and got back lots of infection that was sent off for a culture and sensitivity. He said that the drainage looked like refrigerated Parkay. He made a point of how it looked like the refrigerated kind and not like that Parkay that had been sitting out at room temperature.  I had written out her history from the time that she had come to be with me, this included her activity level and changes, her change in eating habits, breeding habits, and personality. It came to be a two page report on her. I told them that I thought that she was somewhere between 8 to 10 years of age. Knowing that they can be 10 to 15 years of age, the vet told me no that they thought that she was on the upward end of that age scale. She was at least 10 years plus as far as they could figure. He tried to get some blood from her to check her kidney function. He even shaved her neck looking for a good vein. No luck. He said that it was easier to get blood from a mouse than it was a glider.
     He put her on another regime of the Baytril mixed with dextrose to make it more palatable. He wanted to see her again just before she finished the weeks worth of the antibiotic. I took her back in and when he squeezed the cheek, the skin just sloughed off leaving a large hole in her cheek. She still was not eating. The culture and sensitivity report came back stating that she had two different organisms growing there. One was sensitive to the Baytril the other to neomycin. I was to continue the Baytril for ten days and I was to cleanse the wound with peroxide and apply neosporin to the site three times a day. Roseanne went from 120 gms down to 75 gms. Everyone was worried about her. I had to begin to force feed her with a syringe by mixing up a mash for her and injecting it into the back of her mouth and forcing her to swallow some of it. I force fed her for three days, then she began to eat the mash on
her own. I had separated her and her mate Dan, because I didn't want to run the risk of his harming her. I knew that she was depressed due to her illness and the separation so I placed their cages side by side. This seemed to help some and she began to eat better. Her wound healed.
    We suspect that it was caused by Dan pushing her away while squabbling over some food. That his nails were sharp enough and her skin fragile enough with age, that his nails may have penetrated her skin introducing the infection.
     A few months later she had a joey in pouch. I called her vet to tell him how she was doing. He couldn't hardly believe that she had a joey in pouch. He asked me if I was sure? When her boy came oop he was three times the size of a normal glider. I took her and Dan and their son to see her vet when their boy was nearly weaned. He couldn't get over it. He said that she didn't even look like the same glider. He also said that there was no way that she could have renal disease or any other serious illness and still reproduce healthy offspring like that boy.
     That was a year ago and she still has one joey every four to five months. Her son that just came oop out weighs two babies that are two weeks older than he is. When she is no longer capable of reproducing healthy offspring because of her advancing years I am going to have her mate neutered. I
would never separate the two of them and do not want to risk endangering her health.