I have a 6 week old baby girl named Kaya. She is so great. I keep her right next to my bed at night ( she is too young to be in a regular cage). I woke up tuesday morning around 3 am. She was making this horrible noise that I have never heard, She went back to sleep after a few minutes. Once she was calm I went back to sleep also. She normally wakes me up chattering to eat around 7 am. She woke me up making that horrible noise. I tried to feed her and she bit me, which she has never done. She wouldn't eat. She loves to eat normally. I knew something was wrong. After she ate I put her in my shirt where she normally hangs out. She started flipping again, I noticed she was scratching and biting her chest, It was the worst thing I have ever seen. I was so hysterical I didn't know what to do. I tried distracting her and putting a cloth in the way, she managed to get around the cloth. I felt so helpless.
     I called the breeder I got her from and she said bring her right up. As soon as I got her there we called the vet. I got to the vet within 2 hours of her starting to scratch and bite, she had already made a bad wound on her chest! It was treated as a skin irritation and they put ointment on it. The breeder asked me to come by afterwards so I did.
     The ointment seemed to work. Until I got home!! Which is 45 min away from the vet. She started flipping again and I had the vet paged. Thankfully she is really caring and met me there at 7:30 pm after going home and doing research. I was shocked. She found an article published in feb. about a nematode (internal parasite) that causes self mutilation and was seen in babies around 5 weeks old. Which Kaya was. So she treated it with an oral medicine and stayed there with me until after 9 pm trying to figure out something to keep her from getting at her chest , because the medicine takes 24-48 hours to take effect, we made a sweater looking thing out of gauze.
      I cant believe how caring she is. If she hadn't gone home and looked it up Kaya wound have probably killed herself by now. I am telling you this not only to keep an eye out but also because it is not very well known, the article was published in feb. and they have not even named the nematode yet!
     If one of your gliders show these symptoms please keep this in mind if the medicine they give you doesn't work tell your doctor you heard it may be a nematode or an internal parasite they should know how to treat it then. It has also been seen in adults! It was a horrible experience especially when I went home at first and thought it was better. I am in St. Petersburg FL. If you are in this area and need a vet for your gliders you can email me and I can give you my vets info. It is called Countryside Animal Hospital, in Countryside FL. They are wonderful the other Dr came by to help even though it was after hours and he doesn't treat gliders.           Thank you for listening,

4/23/2000

It has been 5 days now. Within 24 hours Kaya was much better back to her sweet self. She still has gauze there just in case but luckily she is doing great.

4/25/2000

I just took Kaya back to the vet. She stopped scratching and biting. Even after we took the bandage off. Until I got to the car. So for now all we can do is keep bandage over it. It looks like a sweater. She gets another dose of Ivermectin next Tues. Hopefully that will do the trick.