There are some very graphic pictures at the end of this post, so if you have a weak stomach … go back now.

Yesterday our 2 year old DH Sunglow died. We knew she was having some health issues but this was totally unexpected. Until a couple weeks ago she has always been the picture of health, but it appears now she had been sick for quite some time. I am posting this here to be educational and informative, and to illustrate how little we know or can do sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago we got what I thought was a very odd looking stool out of Gloria. I now believe it to be a regurge. It was grayish-pink and about the consistency of wet paper pulp, full of hair and not much odor. It was about a week and a half since her last meal. I didn’t think too much of this, sometimes you just find something weird, but it really isn’t anything to be concerned about. A couple of days later more of the same grayish matter was found in her cage.
A few more days pass and she refuses her meal. This is the first time she has ever done this in the two years we have had her. I am now becoming concerned that something really might be going on with her. We decide to tube a dose of Flagyl into her and see if this will help with whatever her digestive issue is. After we have tubed her, we discover that she has a small area about ¾ of the way down her body on her belly that is kinked and flat, and obviously painful to her. It looks like she has been crushed.
We make our fist trip to the vet the next day. The vet seems to think it is some kind of trauma (she has been squashed or injured herself in some way) his X-ray equipment is broken, so I leave with no real answers. I spend the next couple of days questioning how she might have hurt her herself, alone in a Rubbermaid tub, and cannot come up with any answers.
Feeding day comes again and she takes a small mouse (a very small meal for her) with gusto. I think great! Then two days later I find it regurged in her cage. Crap!!! Now I am really starting to worry. I call the vet again and make an appointment for some X-rays to be taken on Saturday. If she is broken, like we all seemed to think, I want to know the extent of the damage.
The X-rays show that she is not broken in any way. They do show some fecal matter right in the area that she is having problems. The vet decides to tube some laxative into her to relieve this “possible blockage”. We get home and she regurges everything that has been tubed into her. She pukes again three more times on Saturday. I’m thinking “Crap, this is getting really serious.” I decide to call the vet again first thing Monday.

Sunday afternoon Gloria died.

The vet came by today and did a necropsy. He took tissue samples to send away for a pathology report. But his initial feeling is cancer. As you can see from the pictures Gloria’s entire liver is covered with growths. Her lower gut was hard and calcified and the vet thought it was a miracle that she hadn’t regurged before. Her one kidney was normal but the other was also covered with growths. (he removed half of it for the pathology sample).

Like I said at the beginning of this post, until a couple weeks ago Gloria appeared to be the picture of health. Great appetite, good growth, excellent looking snake. It just shows how little we really know because this problem has been developing for quite some time.


The flat spot on her stomach we thought was a crush injury, we now know to be a very painful kidney.

Her lower stomach with calcification

Liver, completly covered with growths

Healthy Kidney next to bad one


Gloria how I want to remember her!!


Kathy & Denny

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