beardedlady91
Member
Hi there!
I am a new user on this forum, but have used the discussion board responses and resources of this website frequently in the past. Sadly what my beardie is suffering from seems to be a bit uncommon. In May 2015 I adopted a 5-6 year old beardie named Frankie. When I first got her, she was a bit on the malnourished side, with constant dark colors and a nervous and aggressive demeanor. At the time I was also caring for my sister's beardie Sheila, and after a while I finally got Frankie to soften up and become friendly with not just me, but Sheila, and my family. Frankie gained weight appropriately, received a more diversified diet, and lots of outside time. In September I moved with both beardies to Madison and for a time housed them in the same tank, but they were kept separately due to a divider. Sadly in October Sheila passed away at the age of ten due to a prolapse of her ovaries, and an autopsy revealed she in general had a healthy skeleton despite some fusing of vertebrae and had growths (non-cancerous) along her spine(but no MBD, in spite of having muscle tremors for the past few years of her life). About 2 months after Sheila died I began to notice very slight muscle twitches in Frankie, mostly in the hind legs or upper arms. Thinking it could be a calcium problem, I immediately replaced her UVB to see if that helped. A month or two passed and still the twitching continued, usually during a period of rest after activity. Frankie was also brumating during this time, so in general she was much more lethargic and eating/defecating less. In February I finally went to a vet who suggested adding some vitamin dust to Frankie's diet in a addition to the calcium dust, and she also found an elevated number of pin worm eggs in Frankie's feces, so we did a few rounds of antibiotics. I waited another month or two to see if the new UVB light, added vitamins, and a diversified diet would help. While Frankie seemed to come out of her winter slump in personality, the twitches continued, and began spreading to other parts of her body, and began to last longer as well. Another visit to the vet early this summer and a simple blood test showed no results, other than a slightly lower white blood cell count. My vet suggested I do further testing with the UW Vet hospital, and recently I did. Her physical exam revealed she's a bit overweight, and the muscle tremors were noted in her pelvis, limbs, and chest. She was sedated for some tests and the tremors were even more pronounced. Her electrolytes, kidney and liver function seemed adequate, as was her ionized calcium (this ruled out MBD). Bone density was also fine, though she has some kind of mineralized mass in her digestive tract (possibly a buildup of calcium, exoskeletons, or granuloma). The CT scan also revealed a small amount of free fluid located in the coelemic cavity (but listed as normal). It was noted that the liver is enlarged "with rounded margins and is fluid to fat attenuating". So essentially metabolic bone disease was ruled out, as was vitamin deficiency. Honestly the vets seemed stumped. They say the other possibilities are neurological disease or Adadenovirus. To find an answer will involve muscle testing and possibly a biopsy, and sadly for Adadenovirus I've read the only way to diagnose is post mortem. I am at my wit's end, terrified every day I will come home and something terrible will have happened to Frankie. In the last few weeks as well she has barely been eating veggies, which I offer to her everyday, and also only defecates maybe once a week, and that's usually when I'm bathing her. She is also under her hides most of the time, so I don't know if she's digesting properly. The tremors have gotten so bad- when she DOES eat (she still loves the bugs I give her) her beard twitches uncontrollably, and when she runs around the tremors are all over her body. Even when she has been sitting still for long periods of time I see the tremors. At this point I am looking for any similar experiences to Frankie's as the UW vet team hadn't seen anything quite like it before. The vegetables I feed her 6-7 times a week consist of staples of collard greens, mustard greens, butternut squash, sweet potato, sugar snap peas, green beans, prickly pear cactus, mango, and papaya, and recently I've been sneaking in (occasionally) foods like blueberries, apples, carrots- I even bought some organic baby food with staple ingredients to see if a more liquid food would be appealing and help Frankie- so far she is mostly unimpressed lol. I make her a salad of 2-4 different types of veggies, and try to offer them to her daily, usually put it in her tank before I leave work. The past two weeks she barely nibbles at it, the majority of the salad is still left behind. Every other day I give her bugs, as I had read 70% diet for adults should be veggies/fruits, 30% should be meat protein. I feed her gut loaded dubia roaches (fed the same veggies she gets) and switch off between also supplementing with either horn worms (she devours those like they're drugs!) or phoenix worms. If I'm running low on bugs I will feed her meal worms, but that's very occasional. A few months ago I tried switching back to crickets (though I hate them) to see if that helped but I didn't see much of a difference. I use Tetra Fauna Repto Cal calcium dust (with Vitamin D3 and a small amount of phosphorus). Frankie has a water bowl kept in her tank for humidity and to sit in if she gets too hot- I think she's been using that fairly frequently lately. And she gets a bath at least once a week. I've made a lot of lighting changes for her tank in the last few months to try and help encourage her to be active or to adjust due to the heat and humidity in my house (which these days sits at about 75-80 degrees). Presently, I am using a 160 watt Mercury vapor bulb to heat and give UVB, and at night I have a 70 watt black heat bulb running. I do have floor heating pads for her but don't use them now that its so hot all the time. Frankie has two areas of her tank where she can hide, one that is on the cooler side of the tank, the other is in the basking area, but that actually works to prop up a rock I have for her to bask on. I use a felt/AstroTurf like mat as her floor in the tank. Her basking rock/area sits 8.5-9 inches below the lowest point that the MVB reaches, however it previously sat higher up due to some branches I had propped above the basking rock- I think it put her too close to the light source and that's why she never would bask, so I made the change. At night, when the black heat bulb is on, the temperature at floor level in her tank is around 82-84 degrees, and I think that might be too high (sadly my house is so warm these days- I'm thinking of shutting the light off at night). During the day, the temperature at her basking rock is presently averaging 98 degrees, while the hide under her basking area is averaging 88 degrees. Floor temperature on the warm side of the tank is 96-97 degrees, and on the cooler side its 85-87 (too drastic a difference?). Under her hide on the cooler side it reads 84 degrees . Her tank measures 18 x 47 x 21 inches. When I clean her tank I only use steam to clean it, and for her logs and rocks I bake them in the oven to kill bacteria. She is awake from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm. If there is any other info I can provide please ask, I would really love to hear if any other people have experienced similar muscle tremor concerns with their beardies. I just want to give her the best life possible :/
Also here are some photos of her, and (sorry for those who are of sensitive stomachs) her last poop. Sorry that this post was absurdly long too!
I am a new user on this forum, but have used the discussion board responses and resources of this website frequently in the past. Sadly what my beardie is suffering from seems to be a bit uncommon. In May 2015 I adopted a 5-6 year old beardie named Frankie. When I first got her, she was a bit on the malnourished side, with constant dark colors and a nervous and aggressive demeanor. At the time I was also caring for my sister's beardie Sheila, and after a while I finally got Frankie to soften up and become friendly with not just me, but Sheila, and my family. Frankie gained weight appropriately, received a more diversified diet, and lots of outside time. In September I moved with both beardies to Madison and for a time housed them in the same tank, but they were kept separately due to a divider. Sadly in October Sheila passed away at the age of ten due to a prolapse of her ovaries, and an autopsy revealed she in general had a healthy skeleton despite some fusing of vertebrae and had growths (non-cancerous) along her spine(but no MBD, in spite of having muscle tremors for the past few years of her life). About 2 months after Sheila died I began to notice very slight muscle twitches in Frankie, mostly in the hind legs or upper arms. Thinking it could be a calcium problem, I immediately replaced her UVB to see if that helped. A month or two passed and still the twitching continued, usually during a period of rest after activity. Frankie was also brumating during this time, so in general she was much more lethargic and eating/defecating less. In February I finally went to a vet who suggested adding some vitamin dust to Frankie's diet in a addition to the calcium dust, and she also found an elevated number of pin worm eggs in Frankie's feces, so we did a few rounds of antibiotics. I waited another month or two to see if the new UVB light, added vitamins, and a diversified diet would help. While Frankie seemed to come out of her winter slump in personality, the twitches continued, and began spreading to other parts of her body, and began to last longer as well. Another visit to the vet early this summer and a simple blood test showed no results, other than a slightly lower white blood cell count. My vet suggested I do further testing with the UW Vet hospital, and recently I did. Her physical exam revealed she's a bit overweight, and the muscle tremors were noted in her pelvis, limbs, and chest. She was sedated for some tests and the tremors were even more pronounced. Her electrolytes, kidney and liver function seemed adequate, as was her ionized calcium (this ruled out MBD). Bone density was also fine, though she has some kind of mineralized mass in her digestive tract (possibly a buildup of calcium, exoskeletons, or granuloma). The CT scan also revealed a small amount of free fluid located in the coelemic cavity (but listed as normal). It was noted that the liver is enlarged "with rounded margins and is fluid to fat attenuating". So essentially metabolic bone disease was ruled out, as was vitamin deficiency. Honestly the vets seemed stumped. They say the other possibilities are neurological disease or Adadenovirus. To find an answer will involve muscle testing and possibly a biopsy, and sadly for Adadenovirus I've read the only way to diagnose is post mortem. I am at my wit's end, terrified every day I will come home and something terrible will have happened to Frankie. In the last few weeks as well she has barely been eating veggies, which I offer to her everyday, and also only defecates maybe once a week, and that's usually when I'm bathing her. She is also under her hides most of the time, so I don't know if she's digesting properly. The tremors have gotten so bad- when she DOES eat (she still loves the bugs I give her) her beard twitches uncontrollably, and when she runs around the tremors are all over her body. Even when she has been sitting still for long periods of time I see the tremors. At this point I am looking for any similar experiences to Frankie's as the UW vet team hadn't seen anything quite like it before. The vegetables I feed her 6-7 times a week consist of staples of collard greens, mustard greens, butternut squash, sweet potato, sugar snap peas, green beans, prickly pear cactus, mango, and papaya, and recently I've been sneaking in (occasionally) foods like blueberries, apples, carrots- I even bought some organic baby food with staple ingredients to see if a more liquid food would be appealing and help Frankie- so far she is mostly unimpressed lol. I make her a salad of 2-4 different types of veggies, and try to offer them to her daily, usually put it in her tank before I leave work. The past two weeks she barely nibbles at it, the majority of the salad is still left behind. Every other day I give her bugs, as I had read 70% diet for adults should be veggies/fruits, 30% should be meat protein. I feed her gut loaded dubia roaches (fed the same veggies she gets) and switch off between also supplementing with either horn worms (she devours those like they're drugs!) or phoenix worms. If I'm running low on bugs I will feed her meal worms, but that's very occasional. A few months ago I tried switching back to crickets (though I hate them) to see if that helped but I didn't see much of a difference. I use Tetra Fauna Repto Cal calcium dust (with Vitamin D3 and a small amount of phosphorus). Frankie has a water bowl kept in her tank for humidity and to sit in if she gets too hot- I think she's been using that fairly frequently lately. And she gets a bath at least once a week. I've made a lot of lighting changes for her tank in the last few months to try and help encourage her to be active or to adjust due to the heat and humidity in my house (which these days sits at about 75-80 degrees). Presently, I am using a 160 watt Mercury vapor bulb to heat and give UVB, and at night I have a 70 watt black heat bulb running. I do have floor heating pads for her but don't use them now that its so hot all the time. Frankie has two areas of her tank where she can hide, one that is on the cooler side of the tank, the other is in the basking area, but that actually works to prop up a rock I have for her to bask on. I use a felt/AstroTurf like mat as her floor in the tank. Her basking rock/area sits 8.5-9 inches below the lowest point that the MVB reaches, however it previously sat higher up due to some branches I had propped above the basking rock- I think it put her too close to the light source and that's why she never would bask, so I made the change. At night, when the black heat bulb is on, the temperature at floor level in her tank is around 82-84 degrees, and I think that might be too high (sadly my house is so warm these days- I'm thinking of shutting the light off at night). During the day, the temperature at her basking rock is presently averaging 98 degrees, while the hide under her basking area is averaging 88 degrees. Floor temperature on the warm side of the tank is 96-97 degrees, and on the cooler side its 85-87 (too drastic a difference?). Under her hide on the cooler side it reads 84 degrees . Her tank measures 18 x 47 x 21 inches. When I clean her tank I only use steam to clean it, and for her logs and rocks I bake them in the oven to kill bacteria. She is awake from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm. If there is any other info I can provide please ask, I would really love to hear if any other people have experienced similar muscle tremor concerns with their beardies. I just want to give her the best life possible :/
Also here are some photos of her, and (sorry for those who are of sensitive stomachs) her last poop. Sorry that this post was absurdly long too!
Any way yo can post a video of her ? You've been very thorough in listing all husbandry specs and vet exams, so that's good. I wanted to mention though, that you definitely can test for atadenovirus. Not sure why your vet thought otherwise....I sure hope they are not mistaken on other aspects of the testing that's been done on Frankie. If you contact Drache613 here [ Tracie is one of the mods. ] she can get your girl tested for a low price. 
