Tail rot!!

[Damieboo]

Damien's still got it. About an inch and a half of her tail turned black and stayed black for 2 months and finally fell off about 3 days ago, and I thought we were finally done with tail rot because her tail looked healthy and plump. However overnight, again, about an inch and a half of her tail has turned a strange unhealthy color, as if the scales are hardening and shrinking. Looks like the last time she had tail rot. The medication simply isn't working. I was given Chlorhexidine and Silver sulfa-something as topical treatments, an antifungal and an antibacterial. Yellow Fungus results came back negative. So I definitely think it's tail rot.

I am wondering if there's an oral treatment for tailrot because when she was a baby and had a systemic infection, she responded very well to the oral antibiotic. She ate healthily all the way through the infection and I feel like the medication just isn't attacking the infection aggressively enough.

Heck, if there isn't one, I'm prepared to have her tail removed. I can't bear to lose my baby. I've had her for 4 years now and the thought of losing her is just unbearable. I was told by a vet that even when they cut bits of the tail off, the infection comes back and they just keep cutting and cutting and eventually it gets to the point where the dragon will die anyways. Please give me any treatment advice. Currently I soak her tail in Chlorhexidine and apply the silver medication every night. Tail continues to get worse.

 

[dragonlover3]

Hi,
As you know Tail Rot is a serious infection. Rule of thumb, if the current treatment isn't working you need to let the vet know so an alternative treatment can be prescribed. I'd get Damien to a vet ASAP. Tail Rot can become a fast traveling infection and move up his tail toward his body very quickly. One of the moderators here has a beardie who developed tail rot. She took him immediately to the vet where a tail amputation was done to prevent further spread. It was traveling up the tail too.

 

[Damieboo]

Vet was incredibly unhelpful. Treated me like an *****, claiming that the fungus/bacterial test she did on the DEAD, DRIED UP part of Damien's tail came back negative (well no duh, the infection's already moved on!!!) and told me to calm down (calm down when my lizard's tail is literally rotting off and causing her pain?) and think about it logically. She said her tail is probably "dried out from the stress" of all the medication and whatever infection may have been present. She then told me to put "saline eye salve" on it to keep it hydrated and it should return to normal. There is no such thing as saline eye drops. Saline means salt. Who puts salt in their eyes?

Besides that, I was fiddling with her tail and noticed some scales were loose so I gently pulled them off and revealed new scales underneath, which makes me very hopeful. It means her scales are growing so that means they're healthy...though as I picked further down her tail they got darker and smaller so hopefully the dried out looking part of her tail isn't harboring an infection. I'll post a picture to show what I mean.

The white stuff at the very end of her tail is the silver sulfa-something ointment I apply everyday. Underneath that is the new scales. They're very bright white/yellow colored. And you can see where the scales have shrunk and become lackluster.