Worms?

[Prannon]

Here she is! Her name is Chopstick. I've had her for right around a year or so this month. She eats well, seems well hydrated, alert and happy.

Or at least she did. For the past month or two I've noticed her becoming a lot more lethargic. I did some reading about brumation, but this doesn't quite match up. Some things I have noticed:

1) When the light turns off, and if she has been basking, she will not move from her basking place to the cool side of the pen to sleep. Sometimes, she will just fall asleep where she is.

2) If she falls asleep on the cool side of the cage the night before, when the light turns on she will wake up but not move for hours at a time.

3) She still has a very awesome appetite and appears healthy, but I notice that her poops are few and far between and I often have to induce poo with a nice warm bath.

4) She is somewhat small for her age, I've been told.

More on poo:

- The poo in her cage seems less than solid from its dried out appearance.
- When she poos in her bath, it has a really rank stench. Seems abnormal, though it is poop of course.
- Just this morning, I induced poop in her bath, and I took a careful look at it. It was nice and solid, though she seemed to have difficulty getting it out, and it stank fairly noticeably.
- With this poo, I took notice to what at first had appeared to be little flakes of feces, but upon closer inspection seemed to be little tiny worm like creatures!

Based on the evidence, I now firmly believe that Chopstick has parasitic worms. What do I do?

 

[Heptane]

I haven't ever dealt with parasites, but from all the forum posts I've read, the safest answer is to get her to a qualified reptile vet as soon as you can. They'll give you some medicine to kill the parasites and get Chopstick back to normal

 

[Prannon]

Thank you Heptane! I called the local reptile experts, and they directed me to a good vet in the area. I'll be taking Chopstick in tomorrow for the checkup.

 

[Heptane]

Oh good, glad to hear you're going to get Chopstick checked out. Would you mind posting the results when time allows? Can't ever get enough (good) info ya know

 

[Prannon]

Well, wouldn't you know it? I took Chopstick to the vet and they attempted to do a fecal. She wouldn't give them anything to test, probably because she poo'd just the day before. :/

Still, they gave her a "shotgun" dewormer treatment which should be good for two weeks, and then they gave me another dose to give to her when that one wore off.

What's interesting is that after I brought her home, she seemed really restless and wanted nothing more than to be let out of her terrarium. She skittered all across the living room going from window to window, and she ate well. All in all she seems much more alert than before, so I can only assume that she feels a little bit better.

In about 3 weeks I'll take her to the vet again to have her tested. I'm gonna keep a close eye on her.

 

[Heptane]

Glad to hear she is doing better

 

[Prannon]

Better than better actually. I gave her a bath yesterday and she dropped some large turds. There was already a very noticeable difference between this batch and last week's. It didn't stink nasty, and I didn't see any of the segmented creatures that I saw before. This was a pretty clean poo, and I took it into the vet so that they could run a fecal test on it and it came back clean.

Chopstick seems to be doing well too! Still eating well, and she seems just a little more lively than before. I'm glad that she's alright. For the record, the vet visit plus two doses of dewormer only cost me around $60, in case anyone else stumbles across this thread and wants a frame of reference.