Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My jungle carpet python has been battling a respiratory infection for the better part of the past year. She had one, and I raised the temps & lowered humidity, and it went away. As soon as I raised humidity again, the infection came back. We made a trip to the vet, and came back with $75 less in my pocket, a bottle of Baytril and a couple syringes. The infection went away, and she was fine for about a month. I changed her cage again, adding in moist Bed-A-Beast, and BOOM, the infection is back. This has been on and off now for around 10 months. She'll go a month without any wheezing, and then as soon as the temps drop at all, or the humidity raises at all, she begins wheezing again. Now, she's gone almost two months perfectly fine, until we hit a cold night. One night at temps below 80(surprised me, and got down to the low 70s), and she's wheezing so loud you can now hear her all the way across the room. With every breath, she's wheezing like this.

The odd thing is.. the whole way through, there's been no discharge, or visible sign of an infection. She's continued eating (she's like a bottomless pit!), continued moving around.. No real loss of activity or anything. When I took her to the vet, he told me that he didn't see any sign of an infection, and that if it wasn't for me hearing her wheeze, he wouldn't believe she had one.

What else can I do? Asides from baking her, and not letting her have water more than once every couple days, for an hour at a time, I can't come up with anything.
I lowered humidity by removing the dish & only putting it in at certain times, to let her drink, and I increased ventilation.. But that in turn lowered temperatures! I already have a heat pad under her, and a 75 watt light bulb over her..

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm really at a loss; I've tried everything I can think of, and she's driving me crazy. I can't stomach sitting here listening to here wheeze any longer, I feel so bad for her.

I would suggest to have the vet send in swabbings of oral mucosa to a pathology lab to help find out the exact cause. You can also change vets (www.arav.org)-if you are not satisfied. Keep the temps up until you can get a resolution on the problem. Another possibility(usually if WC) is lungworm which may be gaining a stronghold when the python's immune system is lowered.

Hopefully, others here will post on this problem.

Goodluck

The lungworm should have been irridated by now if the cage is kept clean. Actually, I'm thinking this parasite likely needs an intermediate host, but dont know for certain. If this were the case, then the infestation would be gone by now.

I do suggest both a culture, and an Xray and/or ultrasound to determine the extent of the problem. Pneumonia is very difficult to get rid of and your story wreaks of it.

Another possibility (multiple problems could be present here), is that you have an immunocompromised animal for some reason. The first reason to question the health of an animals' immune system is of course husbandry. Your's sounds okay, but dialing in that temp and humidity, measuring both, seems in order. I don't know JCP super specifically, so cannot give you any precise ranges. Other reasons to be immunocompromised are viral and parasitic, and other systemic problems. Blood tests might narrow down some possibilities.

Ian