Hi there! Apologies if this isn't the right place, but I've posted here before (about 9 months ago) regarding Mercury, my rankin's dragon who has crypto. Firstly, he's been well as far as crypto goes, it's well controlled on his medication and his medicine has even been reduced to every other day rather than daily by the vet and he's still responding well.
But my problem is his scale discolouration. It's happened again since my last post but this time (late Friday 23rd February) his mucous membranes have also gone yellow. Upon the advice of the vet I started him on destolit over the weekend until they could get him in on Monday for an exam. I arranged a vet visit yesterday morning (Monday 26th) fearing it was something to do with his liver.
The vet was in total agreement with my theory and took him for a blood test. However, the vet wasn't able to get a big enough sample to test everything (multiple factors were contributing - including the cold, dehydration, and his small size). But we still did a basic blood panel on what we did manage to extract. His inflammation markers were raised, which I was reassured was probably the crypto and that he'd get anti-inflammatory medicine to combat that. But his white blood cell count was normal, so no infections were present. We also did a quick skin swab and tested for yellow fungus, which was negative.
I was given cerenia and more destolit to give daily, along with his parofor every other day and told to give him a month, but advised if there was no improvement within 2 weeks to bring him back and we'd try get a better sample under sedation in a warmer environment and with fluids to try and get a better sample.
Which brings me to today (Tuesday 27th), I gave him his daily electrolyte
bath (advised by the vet last month to help with bowel movements because he sometimes struggles). While I had him out I gave him a once over, and within minutes his beard came up really patterned and dark from almost white, then when I touched his stomach he made this strange noise that I can only describe as a whine, it was a fast exhale of air that was high pitched and he closed his eyes and started breathing heavily, so I gave him a dose of cerenia and put him back in his vivarium, he's since calmed down.
I emailed the vet with the new symptoms, and he's booked him in for admission at 8:30am on Friday (to give the meds a chance to get in his system and monitor a little longer), with an estimated pick up time of 2:30pm the same day.
I have anxiety, ADHD and autism, so my mind is racing with all what ifs and possibilities. I'm worried about taking him to the vet unnecesarily, and I'm also worried about not listening to my gut which is telling me he needs it. I've always been able to pick up on things easily, and Mercury is one of those animals I can read like an open book, but I'm still worried I'm overreacting. Me and the vet have a good rapport, we're almost always in agreement and he listens to my concerns. Sometimes it is difficult for me to describe a topic in detail and formulate an opinion well, so I look for help on the Internet to write my discussion for me. Then a friend of mine recommended it to me
write a discussion post for me and it's a really great resource that I use quite often. Real professionals work there, who throw everything away quickly and efficiently.
Any reassurance, advice, or experiences around this sort of thing are more than welcome.
Thanks in advance, Z
