skyfishcafe
Member
Hi all,
You might have a passing familiarity with our young bearded dragon Alduîn from this thread. I haven't posted an update in several months. Here's the short version:
We have monthly (or more frequent) visits with our ARAV-member veterinarian, who has been open about possible treatments and honest about limits and dearth of peer-reviewed research on them.
We feel glad to have been able to live with Alduîn for this long. When he suddenly collapsed in October last year, we hardly expected him to survive the week, much less another 8 months! Then came the infection, and the MBD relapse... Our veterinarians and vet techs have been rooting for us the whole time, and have been impressed with his survival and continued growth. Yet we can't help but feel that his time may be running out. We are cherishing each moment as we can. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.
We're noticed a troubling behavior that started about 6 weeks ago and has recently increased in frequency. Alduîn will twitch/shake his head, swallow repeatedly, and have difficulty with coordinated mobility. The first two times we noticed it, it was shortly after he had eaten a superworm treat, so we stopped giving those thinking there might be a link. We then noticed that he would sometimes do it after his insect feeders in the evening; today we witnessed it in the morning for the first time, immediately after he had eaten his greens.
We had been hypothesizing that it could be pressure from his GI tract on his kinked spine causing neuropathy or some kind of spasm. However, this evening he did it again despite minimal food intake, and he stumbled so hard when walking that he nearly flipped over. We are beginning to suspect it may be atadenovirus progression or flare-up.
We don't have video of today's incident, but here are some previous examples:
05/25/2020 - https://youtu.be/MRkKYtuhJyo
06/06/2020 - https://youtu.be/4OLebiDBftA
06/08/2020 - https://youtu.be/kKRhrrNbX10
We haven't been able to find any videos of bearded dragons demonstrating this sort of behavior elsewhere. Have you seen anything like this before?
With kind regards,
Aaron
You might have a passing familiarity with our young bearded dragon Alduîn from this thread. I haven't posted an update in several months. Here's the short version:
- Current age is approximately 11 months, weight 293g.
- Diagnosed with MBD at very early age (approx. 2 months) despite appropriate husbandry in our care; suspect poor breeding practices and/or genetics.
- Needed antibiotics to fight off opportunistic bacterial infection.
- Following completion of antibiotic regimen, experienced period of rapid growth followed by MBD relapse. Apparently unable to efficiently absorb calcium dust; receives daily oral administration of liquid calcium gluconate dosed according to mass.
- Nearly imperceptible kinks in spine/tail (retrospectively identified in early xrays) developed into severe scoliosis despite continued administration of calcium. Gentle traction applied 2-3x daily to attempt to keep muscles supporting spine supple, delay onset of chronic pain.
- Recent foecal test and blood test results within normal limits.
- Tested positive for atadenovirus.
- Currently trialing very small (0.03cc) daily dose of gabapentin for pain control. He absolutely hates it and spits out whatever insect we inject with it.
We have monthly (or more frequent) visits with our ARAV-member veterinarian, who has been open about possible treatments and honest about limits and dearth of peer-reviewed research on them.
We feel glad to have been able to live with Alduîn for this long. When he suddenly collapsed in October last year, we hardly expected him to survive the week, much less another 8 months! Then came the infection, and the MBD relapse... Our veterinarians and vet techs have been rooting for us the whole time, and have been impressed with his survival and continued growth. Yet we can't help but feel that his time may be running out. We are cherishing each moment as we can. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.
We're noticed a troubling behavior that started about 6 weeks ago and has recently increased in frequency. Alduîn will twitch/shake his head, swallow repeatedly, and have difficulty with coordinated mobility. The first two times we noticed it, it was shortly after he had eaten a superworm treat, so we stopped giving those thinking there might be a link. We then noticed that he would sometimes do it after his insect feeders in the evening; today we witnessed it in the morning for the first time, immediately after he had eaten his greens.
We had been hypothesizing that it could be pressure from his GI tract on his kinked spine causing neuropathy or some kind of spasm. However, this evening he did it again despite minimal food intake, and he stumbled so hard when walking that he nearly flipped over. We are beginning to suspect it may be atadenovirus progression or flare-up.
We don't have video of today's incident, but here are some previous examples:
05/25/2020 - https://youtu.be/MRkKYtuhJyo
06/06/2020 - https://youtu.be/4OLebiDBftA
06/08/2020 - https://youtu.be/kKRhrrNbX10
We haven't been able to find any videos of bearded dragons demonstrating this sort of behavior elsewhere. Have you seen anything like this before?
With kind regards,
Aaron