Urgh - it was horrible. My 15 year old, Jericho, had laid that day but seemed OK apart from being very tired and dehydrated. I came home at midnight and about half an hour later she started having fits. I called the vet, who thankfully is very good with snakes & agreed to meet me at his surgery. By the time we reached him at 1am, she was completely limp, mouth gaping open and barely breathing.
The vet took her up to the theatre and worked on her for half an hour. Her heart had stopped by the time he got up the stairs with her. The vet said it was desperate measures at that point, so he injected adrenaline direct into her heart, which restarted it. He then intubated her and fed oxygen direct into her lungs until she started breathing regularly. He said he only tried these as last resorts, but he got her stabilised and I took her home around 2am, still totally limp. Neither of us expected her to last the night, but come the next morning, she'd moved slightly in her viv.
Jeri's been gradually getting better over the last couple of months. Naturally, she won't touch anything with vitamins/supplements on or in it ! However, I now have her eating 2 large mice a week and she's started putting on weight again. Just in the last week, she's started moving around her viv like she used to and taking an interest in things.
As I said, both corneas are cloudy & when she's looking around, she's developed a kind of swaying head movement. That's what gives me the idea that she's blind (or at least impaired). The vet said to look out for signs of brain damage (due to lack of oxygen) and also respiratory/lung damage which may have been caused by the pressurised oxygen when intubated. If she's escaped with just sight problems, I consider us to be very lucky.
The vet's conclusion that this was some sort of crisis brought on by egglaying, as he could find no signs of infection, injury or other illness. I have to take her back to him in November (his estimate of when she'll be physically recovered) to think about "contraceptive" injections to stop her ovulating next year. The vet has used these injections successfully with larger boids before, but not with a smaller snake the size of a Corn. But I'm very keen not to have a repeat of this year's drama.
You can't imagine how thankful I am to have a vet less than five miles away, who knows how to resuscitate a dead snake and will willingly do so in the small hours !
