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Posted by Firebringer on April 06, 2003 at 21:20:25:
Hi, folks, this is my first post here, so please be gentle! =) I need any and all advice with my sweet-but-insane sunglow corn snake, Prozac. Prozie has been ill for over a year now, and two different vets have been unable to help her. The initial guess was that she had a simple respiratory infection, and she was treated with first Amiglyde and then Baytril injections. When neither of those worked, her vet added Zylafen skin medicine to be flushed directly into her mouth (which she LOVED, let me tell you =P), and as a last resort, sodium ascorbate (vitamin C) injections. She seemed to get better for a few weeks, but quickly relapsed.
Her symptoms started with a plain lack of appetite around Christmas of 2001, and continued for a couple of months. Since it was winter, I wasn't too worried; I wasn't putting her into hibernation, but I figured she could have been responding to outsite light levels. More symptoms started showing up in spring of 2002, however. She now sneezes/coughs occasionally, sometimes wheezes, and sometimes exhibits open-mouth breathing. Her appitite is still way down, and she's naturally lost a lot of weight. Her shedding has been fairly normal, although less frequent, 'cause she's obviously not growing very much with her limited diet. She often refuses to eat at all, but when she does eat, she does so with her old enthusiam (and stupidity, often whacking her head into the side of her aquarium ;), but she sometimes stops suddenly after a couple of mice and rubs the side of her mouth against anything in her cage she can reach, as though something is irritating her. She even once spat out a half-swallowed mouse (I didn't even know she COULD when it was that far down!) as though it actually hurt to swallow it! And strangely, I've noticed a few times that her feces had a greenish cast, and twice I found a small, green ball, like a tiny peeled grape in it. All these symptoms seem to come cyclically - she'll be fine for a week or two, only sneezing a little and eating as much as a dozen mice at a time (!), before sliding downhill and refusing to eat for weeks, wheezing and open-mouth breathing a lot.
For background info, she's about 5 years old, and was captive-bred in Virginia. She eats frozen adult mice, and before her illness I had her on 3-4 mice a week, fed once a week. She's probably about 5 feet now, tho I haven't measured her in a while. She's in a 20-gallon long tank with a wire mesh top, a plastic branch to climb on, store-bought hiding spots on both ends of her cage, a large dog dish for a water container, and pine shavings for substrate. She has both an incandescent day-light and a black nocturnal heat lamp. Daytime temperature range is 70-80 degrees at the moment, and she spends time equally on both sides of the cage. Oh, and I have no other reptiles, nor has she been exposed to any since I bought her in '99. And she's never been probed, so 'she' might just be a 'he', if it makes any difference.
I'm in the process of finding a new vet, since the first two haven't been able to help, and have contacted my local herp society for help. In the meantime, I need any and all guesses, information, and leads I can find so I can work with my new vet and finally get my poor little girl healthy again. Please share any ideas you might have! I love my little girl, and I'm really worried about her!
Sorry for the long-windedness,
-Firebringer-
