annlizardlover97
Hatchling Member
My poor Vlad who I raised from a clutch of 80-sum eggs and hatched in the summer 6 years ago (& I still have his mom too!) is VERY distressed right now & idk if he's gonna make it thru the nite. I need some help desperately before his vet appt tomorrow a.m. 3 weeks ago I had him at my vets who diagnosed him with pneumonia. He was wheezing, foaming at the mouth, lots of phlegm, black tail & beard, dehydration (his head had areas that immediately started sinking in when he started choking on this mucous), slinging his head back & forth violently & ended up hacking up a big glob of mucous. We almost lost him on the table at the vets office. He gave him a shot of vitamins, and placed him on an antibiotic (Oxytetracycline 50 mg -- give 4-5 drops every 6 hrs making sure head is tilted up to make sure med goes down throat & not into lungs which wud drown him). He was on the antibiotics for 10 days & got better but a few days ago he started showing the same symptoms, only much worse. His eyes are sunken in and black & he looks just awful. This really ticks me off but the vets office, who knows how sick he is & close to death, wudnt make an appt for him to be seen until NEXT WEDNESDAY!! It's now Thursday & I hafta sumhow get him thru the weekend. I am disabled myself with fibromyalgia, CFS & arthritis & I'm in severe pain every day & just got out of the hospital after a 3-week stay, so I'm really weak. Vlad, along with my other beardies & Uromastyx, look skinny, so I don't think my helper who was to come in evry day & feed then & turn the lights on & off, really did what I paid him to do. In fact, I lost one female beardie (Vlad's sister). When I got home from the hospital she was lying in her cage dead! I lost it. These guys are my babies. I took her to the vet for a necropsy & he sed she had nothing I'm her stomach. She died of starvation! I'm still very upset & grieving for her. She dint deserve to die like that. The rest look skinny but are eating well & fattening back up, except for Vlad. The last 2 nights I've stayed up with Vlad because he's having these spells of choking (on the mucous), slinging his head around like he's trying to expel it from his throat but can't, and ends up vomiting it out every now & then. When he sits still after one of these spells, you can here bubbling & rattling in his chest. He sits with his head way up, wheezes, and constantly swallows. He has a LOT of trouble breathing & sits with his mouth open most of the time. He does sleep some, and since the cage gets kinda cold when I turn all the lizard lights out at bedtime, I've started letting him sleep in the bed with me, where I can keep a constant watch on him. I don't get much sleep! He sits on the heating pad, covered with a towel over it so he's sitting on the towel. He stays warm this way but not as warm as he is under his MVB light in his cage during the day. I have also put him back on the antibiotics that were left over from 3 wks ago but idk that he's on the right med. I keep reading here that Baytril is used for URI's. I asked my vet last time if he cud give him sumthing stronger (I dint no about the Baytril at the time) & he sed this med he's on is "it". This vet is NOT a herp vet, he treats mostly cats, dogs, horses, & other small animals but when I moved here there was NO herp vet at all & we kinda learned together. Now there are several more specialized vets who treat reptiles only so I found one only 3 miles away & made an appt for Vlad for 10:15 TOMORROW AM!!! Much better than next Wed! He'd be dead by then coz idk what to do. I'm using a "baby snot sucker" to suction out the mucous in his mouth & throat. It's very foamy, stringy & slimy. Yuck! He sits with his mouth open much of the time gasping for air so I know he can't breathe properly. THIS IS WHAT BOTHERS ME THE MOST, WHAT I FOUND IN HIS THROAT TONIGHT. When his mouth is open, I've shined a flashlight in so as to see better. I don't really know what a beardie's throat should look like but I noticed a small hole in the very very back of the throat. I THINK this is his airway but not sure. It appears to be different sizes when I look at it at different times. A lot of the time it is VERY small which alarms me coz it looks like not much can get thru there it's so small. But THIS IS THE MAIN THING. Idk if these things shud be here or not. At the bottom of the throat, behind the tongue, there are three lumps, for lack of a better word. They look to be about an inch in length & maybe 1/3 of that in width. They're cylindrical in shape & are whitish-yellow in color. They sit on the bottom of the throat/mouth, just behind his tongue. You can see gray chunks & strings of mucous around & on these lumps & all the way to the back of his throat, under the tongue & just all over his mouth. I do try to suction it out but it's very difficult to do coz he definitely duznt like it! My question is, are these lump things part of a beardie's regular anatomy? Shud they be there or not? If not, I'm afraid he has throat cancer or sumthing. He's finally sleeping peacefully now. I'll have him at the vet in the AM but if ANYBODY is up late & can answer this question for me, I'd GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time in reading this (I know it's long!) but I wanted to give a correct & complete description of the history & the problem. I pray it's nothing too serious. Again, thanks for your time.
