Well I have my semi final results on the male I asked about a few days ago.
I started with xrays and I will try and scan them in today and see if I can post them. From the xrays it looks like there is not a clean break, but more of a crush on the spine in an area about 3 to 4 inches long. No ribs are broke, just the spine.
Dr. Ryan says that she is thinking that the spine in that area was damaged and now it is attempting to correct itslef by trying to heal. Unfortunately the damage keeps the spine twisted so when it began to heal, it started to calcify in the twisted form.
We had to put him down. I will tell you that the method we used was a shot - same as cats and dogs get. According to Dr. Ryan a dog or cat is "gone" by the time she removes her needle from the injection site. We first had to find the boas heart, and stick it directly in the heart for best and fastest reaction times. A cold blooded animal has a much slower dispersal time, or metabolism apparantly because it took almost 25 minutes for him to stop moving completely. This was hard for all of us to witness - and we did a second shot within the first 10 minutes of him not going down. EACH SHOT was the equivalent of meds needed for a 40 POUND dog or cat, which would have dropped immediately. HE really was a fighter to last that long with the amount of meds we gave him. Was extremely sad - he was trying so hard to stick with us yet there was nothing that could have been done to help him.
We then opened the poor guy up and examined the section with the crush. We started with what looked like good spine on a few inches left and right of the damage. We then had what we considered GOOD spine to compare it to. This area was easily moveable back and forth, as it should be. We got to the damaged area and this was easy to tell something was wrong even for me. The spine no longer had a straigt edge to it, but it sort of Spread out like you had tried to pry him open from the middle of his spine out. This is where we believe the spine was crushed and as it began to calcify back it became much bigger than normal.
We removed this section with good on either side and we have sent that off for further testing to verify Dr. Ryans theory.
As for Dr. Ryan - she will not see this but THANKS to her all the same. She is a local vet we found a few years back when we had cat issues. She is afraid of snakes, and for that matter is a Speciality Vet for CATS ONLY! However I begged years ago for some help and ever since she has been very interested in them. So hats off to Dr. Ryan for helping, especially when I called other vets in the area who say the will do reptiles and no one was interested in helping with a dirty slimy ole snake.
Dr. Ryan said she wanted to confirm this was a healing break and not something else, disease, cancer or something else she had a name for that meant the boa had a damaged area and then could have been infected which continually made it worse and bigger. So we will wait for the results to come back to know for sure.
I wish I knew how this happened.. and to be honest it looks like the damaged area matches with the width of the female.. BUT I do not see how she could have done that unless she constriced him. I will post the replies from the tests when we get them back.
Thanks for all of the support and interest -
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Thanks
Shawn Morelan
www.SouthernBoids.com
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Signature file edited; [phw 9/26/04]
