Hello all,
Update Time! (will be listing current, full symptoms at bottom)
Dani came home Monday from the vet's office. I must say, we were not happy with the condition we found Dani in when we got to the vet's office to pick her up. When we took her we had her laying on a hand towel as it was easier for her to be moved around on it. She had a BM on the way there and the tech who took her said she would have the towel cleaned up for Dani. Nope. Actually there were about four more BMs crusted to the towel and her tail along with another hard substance that we later identified as dried vomit. On top of that, when I took Dani out of the tub they had her in, three roaches crawled out of her towel and they were not dubias.
When the doctor came in, I was in tears. We had Dani at the sink trying to clean her tail of the crusted poo. We were informed that Dani did well with her feedings (he was only feeding every other day) and she did not vomit at all. "*cough, cough* Bullshit" Again he reiterated not wanting to perform surgery on her and confirmed he sent off a lab testing her for Atadenovirus. He tested the most fresh of the poos attached to her towel and again stated she has no parasites. He told us that he cannot confirm she is gravid and stated he did not want to do an US as they are highly expensive and we already had one xray done. He said since she is able to pass fecal matter fine then she should have no issue passing eggs. He sent her home with enough Carnivore Care to last the week and sent us on our way. He did ask that we call to keep him updated on her progress. Yeah... No.
In the time Dani was in his care, she lost more weight and became a bit weaker. We have started working diligently on reversing her to the right direction. First thing I did when we got home was to come here and looking into all post strands that discussed beardies vomiting and what could be done to help them. We found out about the difference between Critical Care and Carnivore Care, also about the benefit of soy yogurt. We should be getting the Critical Care today and we bought the yogurt. We have started to mix her liquid calcium in with her yogurt, that seems to be working out well so far.
Next step,
hydration. We got some Pedialyte and have been soaking her in half Pedialyte and half water. Also, we mix in a little Pedialyte with her food.
Food. As mentioned before, we only have the Carnivore Care at the moment (Critical Care is on its way). We have been mixing the Carnivore Care with a little summer squash baby food, pedialyte, and a very small amount of soy yogurt. She will have about 2 to 3cc of that with a meal worm or two that we have to put in her mouth for her. We also have a few horn worms and are ordering other small live feeders such as the fly larva thingys... The doctor showed us how to tube feed and we have tried that but it seems to upset her more than if we were to just show some patience and let her open her mouth for us. Case in point, last night she chomped the syringe we were using to give her fluids with, she immediatly started to bleed. We cleaned kept flushing her mouth until the bleeding stopped but she wouldn't let us in to see exactly what happened. We would like to avoid that happening again if at all possible.
Tank. Dani is usual on slate tile but because she may want to lay eggs in something softer, we have converted half of her tank to a light and fluffy topsoil (easier for her to dig in). Dani can move around a little so we are keeping both within a scooting reach.
Lights. As discussed before, Dani has a new Reptisun 10.0 T8 that is 5 to 6 inches from her and a SolarGlo 125w for basking. We have upped the temps in her tank to 97 in her basking spot (any higher and she scoots away) and 85 at night. We have not been measuring her cool side as she has not visited it in a while. Any time she is out of her tank (for feeding or traveling to vet) she is kept on a heating pad at about 95 to 97 degrees.
If you have read this far, thank you!! Please help us get Dani well! We are open to any and all ideas! We have already paid out almost a thousand dollars in vet bills since we started and have been given the run around. We think we have been given better advice from everyone here than the three vets we have been to. Thank you all so much!
Current Symptoms
Paralysis
Vomiting
Lack of Appitite
Lethargic (possible, cant really tell with paralysis...)
Weight Loss
Gravid (her body shape has a bulge that moves down to hips then back to center, not sure what that is about)
Dani's State
Dani spends a good amount of time sleeping but has moments where is clearly alert and looking around. She becomes semi active during feeding time (she still fights us) and will spend hours after feeding time staring at us with a judging glare. Dani has good color and the tip of her tail has gone from a dark grey at the vet's office to a very light grey at home. Dani has not
black bearded except for once where she seemed to be choking on vomit. She is breathing well and has no signs of a respiratory infection.