Reptile & Amphibian Forums

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

Nevermind... due to the severity of her prolapse and our not being able to keep it under control, the on call specialist gave her a poor prognosis even with surgical intervention. We had to have her humanely euthanized this morning.

triny's mom

I am so sorry.
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Cheryl

I am so sorry about your loss of your beloved pet. People think I'm insane when I talk about the personality of reptiles. Both of my beardies have very different personalities, and my two tortoises do too. They are just as much a part of my family as my dogs or cats. Your loss is very real. You certainly did what you could for her. Poor baby.

Take care,
Maleea

SOrry to hear you had do put your dragon down. Wish I was able to catch this post before you had to do that as I do have some suggestions which may have been helpful, especially between vet visits. The care fresh is not a good substrate for a dragon. THough great for small animals because it is very absorbent its no good for dragons. They can easily ingest it and it will swell in their stomachs and intestines and wood pulp isn't the easiest stuff to break down. A better substrate to use with your dragon, especially since she has been having prolapses and impactions would be plain papertowel or the non stick shelf liner or plastic table cloth. These substrates cannot be injested and in the case of the last two, won't stick to prolapses thus making it much easier to keep them clean. Not sure if KY jelly is good or bad, but with carefresh as a substrate it certainly would be horribly bad as all the carefresh would stick to it.

Second, prolapses can be be made to go back in on their own by soaking the animal in sugar water. This really works well with male prolapses so should work ok with female ones. Also I am not sure a prolapse is so dangerous that it would be needed to euthanize your dragon so quickly, unless it was highly infected already.

Surgery may have been pretty hard on your dragon as it is getting along in years but if the dragon was otherwise very healthy it may have been able to survive fine. For reptiles and other small animals the actual surgery isn't really the cause for risk but the anaesthesia can be hard. Sometimes they just don't wake up afterwards.

Once again very sorry to here of your loss. Very difficult to cope with the loss of an animal especially after having it for so long.
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PHLdyPayne

Thank you to all who have responded with your kind words.

I too wish I'd had more information. We had switched to carefresh on the vet's recommendation after her first impaction. However, once she'd prolapsed, we took the carefresh out and had her just on towels. Also, we had given her a bath after her first vet visit and that's when it came back out the first time.... we were really hesitant about bath's after that.

I was going to try one more replacing of the prolapse, but she was given such a poor prognosis... and was clearly not feeling well at all... it seemed more fair to her to let her go.

triny's mom