Egg Bound Since April!!

[Asbit]

Gaea is home - Update

Ok so after a far to eventful pick up yesterday she is here, safe and sound.

She has two incisions, one with 3 stitches the other with two stitches. The showed me how to give her the antibiotic Ceftazidime via intramuscular injection, by giving one final pain med shot. No problem that will be easy, I have given IM shots before so was not worried about it.

She will take the antibiotics every 3 days for approx 1 mth with an appr for a follow up CBC around week 3, to ensure there are no infections and that the 1 month supply of antibiotics is enough. So they gave me 10 doses all pre drawn into needles and frozen.

The only part of the discharge notes I disagree with is that they suggest (as with all reptiles) that she have a source of overhead heat via lamp for a basking spot and that it is easier to control the temp with that type of heat. I will stick to the UTH, as with any healing reptile they have asked I increase her temps some so her UTH is at 88 right now.

She was in shed when she went in for surgery, she was just clearing up from "blue". As I expected, when I went to pick her up she still had pieces of her shed stuck to her. The thing that I am upset about and did not notice until I got her home and took a good look at her and started to wrap her in a damp paper towel to remove the stuck shed, it that they tried to pull off her shed either before it was ready or with out dampening it enough and have pulled off some of her scales. Now she has to repair the two surgery sites and two areas of pulled off scales.

She is in much better spirits though, she is not agitated as she had been the few days previous to when I took her in to the vet. She has unbelievable strength for just having had surgery. If a snake could express " mom get me out of here and don't leave me here again" I swear she did. When I picked her up she wrapped herself around my wrist and constricted so tight that I almost could not peel her off by myself to put her in her transport tub.

Then on the way home we got a flat tire in my new truck and it was the first time trying to change it (lucky my husband decided to come with) as I forgot that I ordered an anti- theft lock for the spare tire and it took he and I 30 min to figure out how to get it down from under the box as the truck manual did not cover the anti-theft option. In spite of the meds being packed in a cardboard box with ice packs and newspaper they still thawed out. I got them straight into the freezer the minute we got home so hopefully they will still be effective.

I have just offered her an adult mouse as she has not eaten in just over a month and she even tagged it (no coil yet) and had it swallowed in less than 4 min, so even her feeding response is getting back to normal. Apparently,the stitches will stay in for a couple of months, should make shedding interesting.


Here are pics of her incisions and one not so great one of a spot of scabbed scaleless area. You can still see several of the marker spots where the marked the "eggs" that were manually felt and seen on x-ray (none of the pics are her proper color as she had just eaten and I just snapped a quick couple with my son's camera).

Vent incision

Uterine wall incision

This one if you look closely you will see a dark mark on her neck, that is one of the now scabbed areas where they tore scales off of her. You will also see some other dark marks on her side, that is where they marked the eggs, she had approx, 7 plus the one stuck in the pelvis so 8 in total. (sorry the pic quality is terrible she would not stay still)

 

[Nanci]

I'm glad to hear that she is home and eating!

 

[wstphal]

This is excellent news! Gaea's home & she's eating! I will keep my fingers crossed that from here she just continues to improve steadily.

 

[Asbit]

Me too they also said that there was no sign of infection or swelling in the uterus even though she had tried for so long to both lay and then reabsorb the eggs.

 

[Marica]

Tisha, sorry to hear you've had to go through this. Last spring we were hoping Naomi was gravid, but after almost a year of her condition staying the same we opted for surgery. She never refused a meal or showed any other signs of distress. At one point last fall her blood results came back indicating possible infection so we went through the antibiotic injections 'til her results were back to normal. However, her 'eggs' weren't being reabsorbed, nor did they ever drop into her oviduct. We figured with the information we garnered from our vet and online sources, that it was unlikely at that point that she would/could reabsorb or pass the slugs, and that it was more likely that the slugs would calcify and possibly adhere to her ovaries, and could eventually go necrotic and cause a fatal infection. Our vet after seeing many snakes go through years of poor ovulation cycles (including a corn belonging to one of her techs) was not hesitant with removing the ovaries, which we had no problem with.

Naomi's surgery went well. The vet showed me her ovaries afterwards and I was able to see the unfertilized ovum attached to them. Despite scheduling her surgery right after a shed, she shed again about 2 weeks after her surgery. We used a damp towel to moisten and remove what we could, and trimmed excess with scissors. We made a couple trips to the vets to have them apply surgical adhesive to areas of the incision that had not fully healed yet. We lined her viv with bath towels which I think she preferred curling between to the aspen substrate. Now months after her surgery she is doing well, eating regularly and does not have any issues shedding. However, as we also tried the baths/swims, she did get used to defecating in the tub, though she does seem to enjoy swimming around for a bit first.

Because that wasn't enough, our '08 amel motley Athena also decided to ovulate earlier this year. We have been offering smaller meals, given her a moist/lay box and are monitoring her regularly as we're hoping not to go through another surgery.

Best wishes for Gaea on a quick and full recovery and if you ever need to chat send me an email. Hugs

 

[Asbit]

Thanks Marica

I really appreciate hearing that others have had to deal with this as well (not that I want other snakes and owners to suffer) so that I know I am not the only one and that knowledge can be shared and garnered from other experiences.

Thank you all for your concern about Gaea it means so much to me to have the support.

I will keep all updated.

 

[CALIVIK]

YAY! So happy to see her home & healing! Grt shots Thanks for sharing!

 

[diamondlil]

Hope she's well on the way to getting better soon!

 

[SnakeAround]

Such an ordeal.. .. had egg problems with 2 snakes this year and I know how it makes you feel sick It does not matter a lot anymore that they are not fluffy, intelligent animals when they need your help, you feel for them!

 

[Caryl]

Wow.... I'm sorry you and Gaea have had this experience. It's great that she's recovering well. It seems to me you did everything in a reasonable, responsible way. It's too bad all animals don't have sensible, caring keepers like you. I hope your baby makes a swift complete recovery and never has another hint of trouble.

 

[Asbit]

Small Update July 16 2010

She has had her second does of antibiotics yesterday and she kept her meal down and pooped with in a reasonable amount of time. It was only a small poop and it was quite mucousy but with all the stress, irritation and lack of food she has had lately, I figure it is to be expected. Hopefully she will have another present for me soon, one that looks totally normal, mind you her meds may make her poos look abnormal for some time (I am not sure and have not asked the vet thought I would wait for the next poo and see what it is like before calling the vet).

She is even going back to her normal routine of only being in the warm hide while digesting and then hanging in the cool hide after a poo!!!

 

[Asbit]

Newest Update Aug 9, 2010

Gaea seems to be doing so very well these days. She is moving around her viv as she usually would. She eats with more and more gusto each time and she only has one dose of medicine left.

I had a family emergency that took me away from home for a bit and her medicine got behind but she is still taking it. I have only had one small concern and that was when she had a poop that was rather concerning looking and it I suspected that it was due to that anti-biotics killing her good bacteria in her stomach. So I mixed her up a very strong dose of NutriBac and things seem to be back on track. I will be giving her another couple of doses just to make sure she gets the right balance.

She has had one post surgery shed, which I had to help her with as she would not stay in her cool side hide very much and so I soaked her for about 15 min and then took about 30 more min to let her crawl through my hands to peel out and so that I could carefully pick away at every little piece of the dead shed that was stuck in her sutures. I can see the skin closing and scaring up well.

Unfortunately, with my husband's rig still out of work right now I have used up all of my savings and borrowed my 18 yr old's savings from him and currently can not afford to take her back for a follow CBC to ensure there is no infection or to have her sutures removed.

So I will figure out 2 mths from when she had the surgery and then I will take them out on my own and just hope that she is as healthy as she seems. I will keep you all updated. As well once I have a chance I will post new picks of her post shed.