Broken tail

She was quite agitated & sniffed a lot too. She refused water & kept going for my eyes flicking at them & wanting to go in my hair. I'm 5'1", my son, who was holding her, is 6' 3" so she's always doing that to a certain extent when I'm looking at her. Otherwise, she just wanted to go hide in our sleeves, which we couldn't let her do as well.

On a few occasions she would stop moving (as normal) but this I didn't like.


She just dangled there & I was concerned but my son reassured me that she does that sometimes. Though from what I've observed, yes she freezes but not dangle! She was ok though, that was maybe a minute max.


Regardless, the vet felt that she could benefit from a shot of pain medication tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow at noon. And then if her behaviour is still the same, call them (vet) with an update & give another shot (24 hrs apart from tonight's). After that wait 48 hrs before the third shot. Though I may have to drive in to get a 4th syringe for a Sunday shot. We'll see tomorrow.

We put her hide on the layers of PT over her UTH. She sniffed around, looked up at my son, then looked over at me before retreating into her hide.

I think her tail looks amazingly well. She's had quite the ordeal over the last couple of weeks, poor gal! I'd try to leave her alone as much as possible for at least a few days and let her de-stress a bit.

I'm really torn right now... (yes again )

Our vet's instructions post surgery were to not give her any pain meds before noon tomorrow. The vet I spoke to tonight wants me to give her a dose tonight regardless of the instructions & then to give her another dose tomorrow night, making them all 24 hrs apart. Original vet's instructions are 48 hrs apart, no less.

I say leave the poor snake alone to "lick her wounds" sort of thing & just rest because I see how easily stressed they can get. But on the flip side, I don't want her to be stressed so much more because she is in pain... I don't want to OD her since I've no clue how much they gave her before I picked her up. And I have been in a situation before, with one of my horses, where my regular vet said one thing & then when his partner filled in for him once, he totally went against what my usual vet said. And he was very adamant about it too! (the partner)

A few months later, the horse was brought to the university hospital & they concurred that my usual vet had been correct all along. His prognosis was a life threatening ailment & his partner said it wasn't. My horse somehow survived it.

So... who's instructions does one go by? Had it been Martha's vet saying to give the shot a day earlier, I would not question it. I don't know this other vet at all.

Oh gosh, I dislike conflicting info, grr.
Just a thought, you said you were concerned about her hanging her head down when your son was holding her, but maybe the pain meds were making her muscles relaxed and sleepy. I know that's how they make me feel lol. I don't really know what I would do about giving her more pain meds before she was scheduled to get them, sorry I know that wasn't helpful at all

Originally Posted by LMS68

I'm really torn right now... (yes again )

Our vet's instructions post surgery were to not give her any pain meds before noon tomorrow. The vet I spoke to tonight wants me to give her a dose tonight regardless of the instructions & then to give her another dose tomorrow night, making them all 24 hrs apart. Original vet's instructions are 48 hrs apart, no less.

I say leave the poor snake alone to "lick her wounds" sort of thing & just rest because I see how easily stressed they can get. But on the flip side, I don't want her to be stressed so much more because she is in pain... I don't want to OD her since I've no clue how much they gave her before I picked her up. And I have been in a situation before, with one of my horses, where my regular vet said one thing & then when his partner filled in for him once, he totally went against what my usual vet said. And he was very adamant about it too! (the partner)

A few months later, the horse was brought to the university hospital & they concurred that my usual vet had been correct all along. His prognosis was a life threatening ailment & his partner said it wasn't. My horse somehow survived it.

So... who's instructions does one go by? Had it been Martha's vet saying to give the shot a day earlier, I would not question it. I don't know this other vet at all.

If she is showing signs of pain or isn't moving and if she is but hesitantly i would give her a little bit of pain meds not the usually dose just a little then give her the recommended amount tomorrow.

Thanks guys
I will wait till the morning to give her a dose. Unfortunately giving a partial dose is not that easy to do when the full dose is only 0.5mg (0.02ml). (Metacam is an NSAID) Martha only weighs in at 67g. She was on it when we originally saw the vet & even then, it was given every 48hrs. I would imagine the pain would be similar then & now?

I'm not familiar with this NSAID but I am familiar with 2 other brands that are for human use & if you do not take it as prescribed, meaning take more than you should in the prescribed time, you can easily OD. And that is not a pleasant experience!

And like I said, when you have two vets giving you different advice & one of them has not seen the patient throughout the whole ordeal. I'm not one to go against doctors' orders but...

I'll check on her before going to bed & see how she is.

Yeah I was thinking about the side effects from the all the meds they gave her in conjunction with the anesthesia. There are 2 different types for humans, I've had both in surgeries & with both (though, from what I understood, one is like an upper, supposed to not make you as drowsy afterwards) I know I crash & will want to take it easy for the next 24 hrs min. So going from all those experiences, I can only imagine that she will stress more but tire quicker. SO I'm thinking she was probably a bit more weak than usual when she took a little breather & was quiet for that little moment.

I'd speak to the original vet before going ahead with an earlier dose, personally. NSAIDs can cause liver damage too easily to make a mistake with them, IMO

That was one of the concerns I had also Diamondlil.

We ended up checking on her up until 3am. She came out of her hide & went under the paper towel at one point (with only her tail sticking out. That was cute). Last check, she had completely covered herself & she was alert. First thing this morning (6am) she had moved again, seemed a bit less on guard & a bit move "normal". By noon, she was much easier to catch, head was up instead of low & guarded. She was still agitated when being handled but closer to normal behaviour when compared to last night. She did not want the injection though, it took a while.

Once back in the tank she cruised around & stared out & around before hiding again. She did take one little sip of water, which is better than yesterday.

I asked my son again about the head hanging that I saw & apparently she does that normally. Usually she rests her head on him.

We have a much happier snake today.

Easy to pick up, at first she was trolling around wanting to go into the crevices of my sweatshirt & I noticed she still had a lot of flaking clear scales & what may look like scale rot? Not sure if it's dead scales needing to come off or SR. So brought her upstairs into the sunlight to have a better look. (Man I need to get my glasses fixed *rolls eyes*. Lots of squinting on my part) I still can't make out one spot & wanted to take photos. She was so much calmer when I was handling her & when I asked my son to hold her for pics, she became agitated. So either she had enough, prefers me handling her or she associates him with food, I don't know.

We put her back in her tank & her pinky should be ready now for feeding actually. She would have been scheduled a feed today anyways, she's acting pretty close to normal today & she finally drank a good fill when I took her out earlier. She also had a poop yesterday. Ok so it was a stress poop (when trying to give her the injection), but nonetheless...

To me, she looks like she's a little dehydrated & could use a snack, heck I can see just a bit of a ridge along the spine. Though I never noticed it before, I could be wrong & just acting like a typical concerned mother. Lol!