First of all, she has been to the vet twice & I am taking her back in as soon as I finish this post.

We have a 6-7 year old female beardie, Trinity. She has never had health problems until the last couple of months. A couple months ago she had an impaction which was treated with enemas, antibiotics and some mineral oil. We thought she made a full recovery within two weeks. She returned to her normal behavior, eating habits etc. Upon the vet's recommendation, we did adjust her enclosure (substrate was sand and is now carefresh). The vet is an exotics specialist.

Yesterday afternoon, Saturday around 3pm, she prolapsed and we took her to the specialist right away. Luckily they were still open. They put her prolapse back and put in a couple stitches to hold it. She received a subcutaneous fluid shot with some vitamins and injected antibiotics. We brought her home with instructions to inject her pre-measured antibiotics daily for 10 days, three sub-q fluid injections for each day until her follow up visit and instructions for mineral oil twice daily for three days. The vet said she is impacted again which is why she has the prolapse. The vet also said if it did come back out to keep it moist with KY jelly until they could put it back when they opened on Monday. I do have to qualify that the vet really did NOT think it would come back out.

Unfortunately within an hour of leaving the vets office, which we were at past closing, she pushed it back out. The emergency clinic near us does not have a specialist associated with the facility but there is one in about 30 minutes up the freeway that has a specialist on call. We took her up there where they said one of her sutures had popped. They put it back again and did a stronger suture to replace the one that had popped. Unfortunately, we did not ask if they'd replaced both sutures. We brought her home again and put her to bed around 8pm. She slept all evening and presumably through the night. As of 5am, she was fine still.

I woke up at this morning and checked on her, she has another prolapse. I administered her antibiotics and put KY on her exposed tissue. Then I called the emergency clinic. They said that she will most likely need surgery since we cannot seem to keep her prolapse in but they can't do anything about that until Tuesday when their surgical team is in. Our regular vet will be open on Monday morning. They said I should bring her in so they can atleast put the tissue back for now.

So, here are my questions. Our regular vet said that beardies don't develop these issues out of the blue. There is usually a reason behind it. We tried to do a blood draw on Saturday but couldn't because of her dehydration. That would have answered some questions, but we had to wait for her follow up. Does anyone have experience with this kind of situation? What kind of options do we have? What is the likely hood of this being solved if we did do surgery? How well do beardies this age do with surgery? What kind of cost is associated with surgery?

As I said at the beginning, as soon as I sign off, I am back to the emergency clinic for a temporary repair. I hate to have it come down to cost as we love her very much. We are hoping this repair will hold until tomorrow morning when we can take her back to her regular vet, but given that she has pushed (we can see her actively pushing) it out twice, and really prolapsed three times in less than 24 hours- we are not sure what will hold until tomorrow. Also, if this is a sign of a larger health problem, what is the best thing to do.....

I appreciate any advice that one has to offer. I probably won't be back for a few hours but will check as soon as I return and get her settled in.

thanks,
triny's mom

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