need info,recommendations or encouragement

Hi,

thanks for your reply,

I can't remember the name of the bacteria if my life depended on it, even my vet gave up trying to prononce it
but it was a bacteria that lives in wet, humid enviroments, this is why the recommendation to keep the cage dry, clean, desinfected at all times to help her rid this bacteria. The reasoning was that the mucus would contaminate and spread, therfor re contaminate her in return.

To try and find what ever viral bug she may have, we did a fecal test and that came back clear of anything, not sure what other test could be done.
blodd tests, x-ray ??

so for now, the vet said to keep an eye on her, got the heat a little higher than usual, humidity is where it should be, a bigger water bowl to help her out, with hopes she will soak on her own..
next comes the feeding.
wanted to last night but she did not come out, she stayed in her hide on the hot spot.

if by the weekend she hasn't eaten, i will get what i need to tube feed her and keep my fingers crossed.

just gald some of the redness went away in the last shed..

http://www.vmsherp.com/LCDisease.htm


This is a good website that covers alot of different things that reptiles deal with.

Hope it helps!

thanks, i had that one in my favorites a while back but when we changed computers at work, i lost everything.

steph

Do keep us updated on her progress, either way, and good luck!

Dear Yeloowtang- I wish I'd seen this post sooner. I am a vet tech and want to throw out a couple of things. The redness you're seeing is from septicemia. They rarely recover from this, but if it's going away, that's a REALLY good sign. As far as antibiotics go, reptiles usually require VERY long courses of treatment, weeks and weeks sometimes. Also, the fecal would have only shown GI parasites and bacteria, NOT viruses. If your vet suspects a particular virus, they will have to send a blood sample out to a lab for testing, however there is so little known about reptile viruses that there really isn't anything that I can think of out there that you can test for.
As for the injection site, there is a longstanding belief that particular drugs which are hard on the kidneys should not be injected caudal to the reptiles kidney because they circulate blood from the caudal part of their bodies to the kidneys before it gets into general circulation. I ave read studies that say it doesn't matter, but no one wants to be the first to take the risk, so we still all go by the old rule just to be safe. If the vet that did this really knew what they were doing, it may not have been the big faux pas it seems like.
As for tube feeding, the stress is often deadly. If you think she'll last without it, I wouldn't do it. After all, stress causes regurgitation, so if she urps it you've done no good. Have you tried "force feeding" a small rodent to her? I mean opening her mouth and stuffing it in, trying to trigger the natural swallow reflex. I would certainly try that before tube feeding. Also, there is the inherent danger of accidentally getting the tube in the trachea instead of esophagus.
Best of luck, and please keep us updated on her progress.

thanks for the reply Lupine,

For now , the redness is looking m better, scales look as if they dried up some on the body..
Another Vet on a forum mentioned a same study as the one you read, where baytril may still be effective even if injected lower, but nothing confirmed as well.. so as you said, most will still play safe..

vet did not suspect any viruses for now and did not feel a blood test was neccessary as of yet. we did the stool sample testing because when the sent gland prolapse i found blood in her stool..

as for the force feeding, i'm intregued now... i was under the impression that tube feeding would create less stress and less chances of just spitting the rat back out,just slide the tube down and inject the mix, but it makes sense..

i had tried to force feed a smaller prey item but did not want to stress her more, her feeding response did not kick in and she kept trying to avoid it being put in her mouth..
i will try again with something really smaller like a rat pup to start with..

thanks for the suggestion.

Originally Posted by yeloowtang

was under the impression that tube feeding would create less stress and less chances of just spitting the rat back out,just slide the tube down and inject the mix, but it makes sense..

Forcing a tube down an animals throat when it doesn't want you to isn't a matter of "just" sliding the tube down unless she doesn't have the energy to fight you, if she does have the energy you will learn quickly it aint that easy! Since the tube is going down the throat they will want to gag, and you have to push the food slowly because a sudden introduction of a belly full of food when your brain knows you didn't swallow will make any animal puke. I know from experience, I've fed many a animal via esophagostomy, nasogastric and orogastric tube. The food also needs to be warmed to body temp. If your vet didn't do so, you'll need to measure the tube length to where the stomach should be (much harder on a snake than any other animal) and get the tube into the stomach because if it is just in the esophagus it will increase the likelihood of regurgitation. I hold the tube alongside the animals body with the tip where it should be inside the stomach when placed, and put a mark with a sharpie on the tube where the animals mouth is, so I know when to stop advancing the tube. If the tube stops going (you run into an obstruction) about 1/4 the way down the snakes body, especially if the snake's mouth (inside) is turning blue- you've gone down the trachea.
If you decide to tube her, I wish you the best of luck! (sincerely, not being sarcastic) and keep us updated on her progress!

thanks for all that information, the only info they gave me was that when i get 3/4 of the way down, i should feel ristriction, that is when i've reached the stomach and i can start slowly injecting the food.
they said to avoid going down the wrong opening, to start on the side of the jaw, it limits the chances of screwing up from starting in front...
i knew about the temps but never metioned about it gaging... they seemed to make it look much easier.. just lub it up and slide it down..
what you are discribing seems to make way more sense...since she is still strong, i figure getting the tube down her throat won't be easy at all from your experience...

i will try the force feeding of a rat pup first, if that fails , then a pinky or two, just to get something in her..
if all this fails, then i will have a serious conversation with the vet next check up to see if they have experience in tube feeding, if so then i will request they do it in front of me so i can do it myself next time..

thanks so much for the info, i will for sure update as it goes.

Steph

lol - snake's don't have a gag reflex...
(keep in mind that their means of ingesting food is quite a bit different than that of mammals; and that their glottis is well forward of their esophagus so they can eat without "choking")
That doesn't mean it is necessarily easy to push something down their throat, if they don't want it. They can, and will, tighten up, twist around, and attempt to expel whatever foreign body you are trying to place.

that's what she did when we tried to get a wean rat in her mouth,
we decided to try again another day, and chucked the rat in the garbage.

it wasn't going as planed, open mouth, present rat, push it in, work it down and voila !! but she clearly had other plans

at least she's still vigourous...