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Butter issue thread

MerlinsPop

MerlinsPop

New member
Just starting this; no news.

Dropped Butter off at Eastern Exotic Veterinary Center this morning. Looked like a very well-run place. Their "mascot" in the lobby is a very nice looking yellow bearded dragon (forgive me for the nomenclature).

They'll keep him all day and will call with results and the diagnosis.

Cross your digits for him, if you will. Thanks.
 
Initial results

Vet just called following inital exam:

- Poor body condition (ribs, backbone showing), weak muscle tone.
- Somewhat dehydrated.
- Some mucus is present in his mouth, but not a lot...
- Weight down to 380 g from being 404 g 10 days ago, despite having eaten a small adult in the mean time.

She's going to do blood tests and x-rays now. Will call me back today with the x-ray results but the lab work will take to saturday or monday. In the mean time, she wants to send me home with both oral and injectable antibiotics to try to get as broad a spectrum covered as possible and as quickly as possible, based on his weakened condition. I'm sure she'll go over how to administer both of those, but anyone care to share advice?

She also recommended a warm soaking every day until he sheds, then every other day until this clears up, too.

He's been on aspen and will change it over to newspaper/paper towels when he gets back home.
 
MerlinsPop said:
Vet just called following inital exam:

- Poor body condition (ribs, backbone showing), weak muscle tone.
- Somewhat dehydrated.
- Some mucus is present in his mouth, but not a lot...
- Weight down to 380 g from being 404 g 10 days ago, despite having eaten a small adult in the mean time.

She's going to do blood tests and x-rays now. Will call me back today with the x-ray results but the lab work will take to saturday or monday. In the mean time, she wants to send me home with both oral and injectable antibiotics to try to get as broad a spectrum covered as possible and as quickly as possible, based on his weakened condition. I'm sure she'll go over how to administer both of those, but anyone care to share advice?

She also recommended a warm soaking every day until he sheds, then every other day until this clears up, too.

He's been on aspen and will change it over to newspaper/paper towels when he gets back home.
Click to expand...

The injectable is probably baytril, which is an intra-muscular injection. Just find a well-muscled area towards the rear of the snake, insert the needle under the scales pointing towards the head all the way, and inject. At 308g, you'll probably be giving around 12ccs, I think...I don't have my papers right in front of me, so I can't figure out the dosage correctly, but my 350g girl was getting 15cc's every 4 days for 2 and a half weeks to clear up a pretty bad case of scale rot.

At first...your snake will probably barely react. A reaction to the needle and injection is a good thing. The stronger my girl got, the more she reacted...almost jabbed myself a couple times, so I recommend having someone else hold the snake while you control the needle.

Good Luck, and keep us posted!
 
Thanks, Chris. Some of the weight difference can be attributted to their scale vs my scale. But he really does look thin to me.

My wife, very supportive, is willing to help with the injection and the oral medication (syringe and tube? - they'll show me, I'm sure), but also being the pragmatic capricorn in the family raised the 'we ain't got unlimited funds' issue. Hopefully the medication will do the job.
 
That's nice they're letting you do the stuff at home. That will save you a ton of money. Getting a tube down him shouldn't be too hard- it's not like you can get it down the wrong hole. They'll give you the appropriate length. Of my four snakes that were tube wormed, only Zee really hated it. The others didn't much care. Addy had to get shots- it didn't seem to hurt her much.

Well, it sucks to have a big vet bill on a new snake, but thank God you got him not some kid with no money and no parental support. Lucky snake.
 
Nanci said:
That's nice they're letting you do the stuff at home. That will save you a ton of money. Getting a tube down him shouldn't be too hard- it's not like you can get it down the wrong hole. They'll give you the appropriate length. Of my four snakes that were tube wormed, only Zee really hated it. The others didn't much care. Addy had to get shots- it didn't seem to hurt her much.

Well, it sucks to have a big vet bill on a new snake, but thank God you got him not some kid with no money and no parental support. Lucky snake.
Click to expand...
Well... the register is rining over there at the moment... $100 x-ray... $85 blood test... No idea what the exam itself or the medicine will be.

I think this is one of those times when I should just tell the person at the front desk, "don't tell me, just show me where to sign." <shudder>
 
I'm so glad I can do my own x-rays...Medicine generally runs $15-25 if the vet does it, per treatment. But if you take stuff home it will be WAY less. The exam is probably about $45. I wonder what they were looking for on the x-ray- pneumonia? Did the vet get to observe the stomach sucking-in? Did you bring her a fecal sample?? I wonder what they are giving him orally...I wonder why they couldn't look at his oral secretions right then and there, and Grams stain it. My vet is all into doing swabs of stuff.
 
Nanci said:
I'm so glad I can do my own x-rays...Medicine generally runs $15-25 if the vet does it, per treatment. But if you take stuff home it will be WAY less. The exam is probably about $45. I wonder what they were looking for on the x-ray- pneumonia? Did the vet get to observe the stomach sucking-in? Did you bring her a fecal sample?? I wonder what they are giving him orally...I wonder why they couldn't look at his oral secretions right then and there, and Grams stain it. My vet is all into doing swabs of stuff.
Click to expand...

We'll see about the rates... for some reason, vet costs are often way out of whack here in the DC area. I'm going to steel myself for a $400 bill, and be glad if it's less.

I didn't have a fecal to bring in... he didn't eat this week, and last Sunday's mouse's digested remains went out in Wednesday's trash last week.

Yeah, x-ray is to check to see if he's got pneumonia and would be part of a try/no try decision, and a baseline if he does get better. She said that she was reluctant to swab his trachea because of his condition (at this point, I'm out of my league). I'll ask if she did a mouth swab.

The reason she suggested both oral and injected (she didn't say which was which, but one is baytril) is that their spectum has very little overlap. Given his condition, she thought it would be better to cast a wide net now, and when the blood test comes back later this week, eliminate one or the other depending on results. She said this would cover most likely bacteria (no virus of course) and only leave fungus as a potential culprit.

Still waiting on more info...
 
More confusing information...

The x-ray showed something she found unusual. There's a 4 cm spot in his lung. Its denser than fluid or puss, and not where one would expect that stuff to be if it was pheumonia. Possibly a tumor.

So, we'll try the medication for 3 weeks, and if he survives that, I'll bring him back for another x-ray.

Man, I'm depressed!
 
MerlinsPop said:
The x-ray showed something she found unusual. There's a 4 cm spot in his lung. Its denser than fluid or puss, and not where one would expect that stuff to be if it was pheumonia. Possibly a tumor.

So, we'll try the medication for 3 weeks, and if he survives that, I'll bring him back for another x-ray.

Man, I'm depressed!
Click to expand...


My thoughts are with you and your little guy. We lost one a year or so ago and her x-rays showed spots on the intestinal tract. He felt they were probably tumors, but that they had nothing to do with her cause of death.

Our little girl didn't make it through the night and her kidneys were in the process of shutting down, so your guy is already far ahead of her.
 
okay... Butter's back in his bin. Aspen's been replaced by newspaper. Before I got home, my wife cleaned and sanitized the bin, his hides and water bowls.

He gets .17ml of Baytril daily orally.
He gets .04ml of fortaz injected 9 times, three days apart.

He's not the happiest of campers tonight, but he's beginning his medications and we'll see what we see.
 
I'm so sorry to hear about Butter. :( Life just isn't fair sometimes. My thoughts are with you and your family. I know this has to be really hard on your son as well.
 
Administered my first dose of Baytril. Can't say it was a picture perfect administration, but most of it seemed to go down the correct hole, and no one is injured.

It's a start.
 
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