Damieboo
Hatchling Member
My beloved 9.5 year old bearded dragon Damien died rather suddenly last Monday. I had taken her into the vet 3 days prior on Friday for what seemed like a URI: intermittent gasping, gaping, black beard. Also keep in mind she's had chronic egg laying for years and had lost a lot of weight recently. At her heaviest, she was 530 grams and at the time I brought her to the vet, she was only 382 grams. They did blood work and the vet said everything looked normal for a beardie in her condition other than elevated calcium, to be expected for ovulating reptiles. Her WBC was not elevated enough to indicate an infection but he prescribed Sulfatrim Pediatric Suspension for it. The instructions were 8 drops (0.24ml) twice daily until gone. She had a black beard but she was still alert and energetic enough to fight back against the oral medication and she also ate a few blueberries and worms on her own in those 3 days so her death caught me very off guard. I gave her a dose at 5pm before I went to work. When I came home at midnight, she was gone. Still in the same place I left her, no sign of struggle, no mucus around her mouth, like it was sudden. Maybe a heart attack or stroke? I tried CPR but I had no way of knowing when she'd passed. It didn't occur to me until after I had her cremated to check the medication and when I looked it up online, everything was showing that it's used for internal parasites. Why would my vet prescribe this for a suspected URI? She had a fecal done a month prior and everything was negative. I also asked when I was making an appointment if they had Baytril and they said that's what they normally prescribe, so I assumed that's what I'd been giving her. But I would think if her cause of death was directly related to the medication, she would have vomited or had some other sort of reaction, right? I'm not trying to put blame on anybody for her death, she was getting older and she'd been struggling with follicular stasis for years and was never at a steady enough weight to undergo surgery. It was just so odd that she was fine and then a couple hours later dead. I always thought I would get one last goodbye before I put her to sleep. I can only hope it was as painless as possible. At the very least I still have questions and doubts about the Sulfatrim. I'll try to attach the blood results as well just in case.