This is a condensed version (believe it or not!!! ) of Jacques' most recent health problems.
Jacques, as many of you may know, is my 4 yr old, female eastern mud turtle. Prior to Dec 8 of 2017, Jacques was an active, curious very healthy turtle who was responsive to people approaching her and quick to beg!!!
On Dec 8, 2017, I found her under her basking platform, appearing to have gotten trapped in the plant roots and drowned. She was revived, but was very weak and began a lengthy medical journey, multiple hospitalizations at the exotic vet for aspiration pneumonia from the drowning, etc.
I will spare you all the details of her problems and treatments, except where it appears to be relevant to the current issue.
She was much less acitive, hiding a lot, and had not been eating very well for several months, but was eating a bite or 2 about twice a week.
On 2/16/2019 I found her in a clear area of her tank, in 5 inches of water, on her back with legs and head extended, appearing to be dead. But as soon as I picked her up, she immediately looked at me and moved easily. Her body was odd puffy: as if she was suddenly 2 sizes too big for her shell and her flesh was protruding wherever it could.
A frantic trip to the exotic vet revealed nothing other than her body was swollen. I had to leave her with them for a couple of days for her puffiness to go down so they could draw some blood. Her blood count was entirely normal (so no return of infection) and the swelling went down. They had no idea what happened with her, but said if it happened again for me to take her to the veterinary school to be seen by the reptile specialists there, and gave me the number to the vet school.
Although I never found her on her back again, the puffiness would come and go, never entirely going away. She remained less active and less responsive, and ate less and less. So I took her to LSU (Louisiana State University) Veterinary School on 3/19 to the reptile specialists. We spent 5 hours there, and she was seen by 2 of the reptile specialist docs, and a vet student. They drew blood and did an ultrasound of her front half (they tried to do an ultrasound of the organs in her back half, but she's too small for their ultrasound probe to fit in the gap by her back legs).
Discussion: None of them have ever seen anything like this before. They have been able to rule out a lot of possibilities.
It's NOT a bacterial infection: blood counts remain entirely normal, she does not appear to have any obvious infections. And over the past 1 and 1/2 years since the drowning, she has had 4 one-week long treatments with antibiotics at my exotics vet, anyway.
It's NOT a parasite infection: she's got no indication of it and my exotics vet treated her for parasites in the past several months "just in case."
It's NOT kidney failure: their blood tests showed entirely normal kidney function.
It's NOT liver failure: their blood tests showed entirely normal liver function.
It's NOT any vitamin deficiency.
Because of the significant personality change after the drowning, they feel confident that she has some degree of brain damage, but there's no reason to think that's causing the current problem.
The ultrasound DID show a "possible mass" up high between her lungs and her carapace. It could be a tumor, it could be thyroid (???) or it could just be scarred lung tissue from her pneumonia that has sort of stuck together and has nothing whatsoever to do with her current problems.
They offered me 3 approaches: Aggressive, Moderate and Conservative.
Aggressive Treatment: A CT scan of her body. It would be able to give more detail as to whether there are any masses developing in her body or not. It would NOT be able to tell us what those masses ARE: only surgery (ie drilling through her shell, etc) would tell us that. Even if there is a mass, it may be unrelated to her problem. The CT scan alone is $600, and that does not include the docs assessment of it.
Moderate Treatment: Give her "empiric treatment" for a fungal infection. "Empiric treatment" means "an educated guess in the absence of complete information." They see no signs of her having a fungal infection- it's just the only thing she hasn't been treated for. The fungal treatment can be one of 2 ways: oral meds or injected into a muscle. EVERY DAY FOR 30 DAYS. Trying to force oral meds on an animal that won't eat and actively resists. Or injections into a small, wiggly animal who is abnormally puffy so that it's hard to even TELL if you're into muscle tissue or just puffy fleshy tissue. AND all this with absolutely ZERO guarantee that this is even the problem at hand.
Conservative Treatment: Take her back home, offer food every couple of days but don't make a big deal of it. Weigh her weekly and bring her back if she loses 18-20 grams in 1 week or 35-40 grams in 2 weeks.
I am going with the Conservative Treatment. The last time she ate anything at all (a single bite of salmon) was 3/16; she has continued to refuse food as recently as yesterday. Her weight at the Vet School was 187.4 gm, and her weight today was 182 gm. So that's only a 5 gm loss in almost 2 whole MONTHS.
About 2 months ago I moved her into her new penthouse suite: 40 gallon breeder tank with her old cave and all the old plastic plants that she is used to. She has 2 basking platform options: a big piece of floating cork and a ramp that she's seen and used before. She does NOT appear to be in pain because she doesn't hide at all (the docs at the Vet School agreed with that assumption). She almost never moves at all: she floats, and is content to drift where the current in her tank takes her. She will occasionally push off from something and turn herself around, and seems to prefer being up front where she watches our comings and goings. Through all this, she is very bright and alert! She is quick to make eye contact and is clearly looking around. But doesn't want to move at all. Even this morning when i weighed her, she let me pick her up, weigh her and put her back in the water. She looked at me the whole time, but never budged. Back when she was healthier, I would have to corner her to pick her up, she would try to climb out of the bowl of her scale and always dived off to hide after I put her back in her tank.
So there you have it. Jacques' Mystery Ailment that has the Veterinary School reptile specialists stumped.
But at least one good thing came out of all this. Her tank is in our dining room, and I just knew it was going to be too depressing to sit there everyday, trying to not notice and wonder what's going on with her. So that's what pushed me to get another turtle, and I got NELSON, my adorable baby razor backed musk turtle who is an absolute delight! Both tanks are in my dining room: Nelson's is to my right as i type this, and Jacques' is to my left. I see and talk to Jacques daily and I also get to see Nelson, too.
Life is a funny old thing.
So here we are.
Jacques sends her love to all.
P.S. Since Jacques is "Miss September" in our 2019 TFO calendar, I bought 2 more calendars and sent them to the docs at the Vet School who worked with her. After all, how often do they get to treat an INTERNATIONAL Calendar Girl??!?!? One of the docs was so happy that she phoned me to thank me in person.
Jacques, as many of you may know, is my 4 yr old, female eastern mud turtle. Prior to Dec 8 of 2017, Jacques was an active, curious very healthy turtle who was responsive to people approaching her and quick to beg!!!
On Dec 8, 2017, I found her under her basking platform, appearing to have gotten trapped in the plant roots and drowned. She was revived, but was very weak and began a lengthy medical journey, multiple hospitalizations at the exotic vet for aspiration pneumonia from the drowning, etc.
I will spare you all the details of her problems and treatments, except where it appears to be relevant to the current issue.
She was much less acitive, hiding a lot, and had not been eating very well for several months, but was eating a bite or 2 about twice a week.
On 2/16/2019 I found her in a clear area of her tank, in 5 inches of water, on her back with legs and head extended, appearing to be dead. But as soon as I picked her up, she immediately looked at me and moved easily. Her body was odd puffy: as if she was suddenly 2 sizes too big for her shell and her flesh was protruding wherever it could.
A frantic trip to the exotic vet revealed nothing other than her body was swollen. I had to leave her with them for a couple of days for her puffiness to go down so they could draw some blood. Her blood count was entirely normal (so no return of infection) and the swelling went down. They had no idea what happened with her, but said if it happened again for me to take her to the veterinary school to be seen by the reptile specialists there, and gave me the number to the vet school.
Although I never found her on her back again, the puffiness would come and go, never entirely going away. She remained less active and less responsive, and ate less and less. So I took her to LSU (Louisiana State University) Veterinary School on 3/19 to the reptile specialists. We spent 5 hours there, and she was seen by 2 of the reptile specialist docs, and a vet student. They drew blood and did an ultrasound of her front half (they tried to do an ultrasound of the organs in her back half, but she's too small for their ultrasound probe to fit in the gap by her back legs).
Discussion: None of them have ever seen anything like this before. They have been able to rule out a lot of possibilities.
It's NOT a bacterial infection: blood counts remain entirely normal, she does not appear to have any obvious infections. And over the past 1 and 1/2 years since the drowning, she has had 4 one-week long treatments with antibiotics at my exotics vet, anyway.
It's NOT a parasite infection: she's got no indication of it and my exotics vet treated her for parasites in the past several months "just in case."
It's NOT kidney failure: their blood tests showed entirely normal kidney function.
It's NOT liver failure: their blood tests showed entirely normal liver function.
It's NOT any vitamin deficiency.
Because of the significant personality change after the drowning, they feel confident that she has some degree of brain damage, but there's no reason to think that's causing the current problem.
The ultrasound DID show a "possible mass" up high between her lungs and her carapace. It could be a tumor, it could be thyroid (???) or it could just be scarred lung tissue from her pneumonia that has sort of stuck together and has nothing whatsoever to do with her current problems.
They offered me 3 approaches: Aggressive, Moderate and Conservative.
Aggressive Treatment: A CT scan of her body. It would be able to give more detail as to whether there are any masses developing in her body or not. It would NOT be able to tell us what those masses ARE: only surgery (ie drilling through her shell, etc) would tell us that. Even if there is a mass, it may be unrelated to her problem. The CT scan alone is $600, and that does not include the docs assessment of it.
Moderate Treatment: Give her "empiric treatment" for a fungal infection. "Empiric treatment" means "an educated guess in the absence of complete information." They see no signs of her having a fungal infection- it's just the only thing she hasn't been treated for. The fungal treatment can be one of 2 ways: oral meds or injected into a muscle. EVERY DAY FOR 30 DAYS. Trying to force oral meds on an animal that won't eat and actively resists. Or injections into a small, wiggly animal who is abnormally puffy so that it's hard to even TELL if you're into muscle tissue or just puffy fleshy tissue. AND all this with absolutely ZERO guarantee that this is even the problem at hand.
Conservative Treatment: Take her back home, offer food every couple of days but don't make a big deal of it. Weigh her weekly and bring her back if she loses 18-20 grams in 1 week or 35-40 grams in 2 weeks.
I am going with the Conservative Treatment. The last time she ate anything at all (a single bite of salmon) was 3/16; she has continued to refuse food as recently as yesterday. Her weight at the Vet School was 187.4 gm, and her weight today was 182 gm. So that's only a 5 gm loss in almost 2 whole MONTHS.
About 2 months ago I moved her into her new penthouse suite: 40 gallon breeder tank with her old cave and all the old plastic plants that she is used to. She has 2 basking platform options: a big piece of floating cork and a ramp that she's seen and used before. She does NOT appear to be in pain because she doesn't hide at all (the docs at the Vet School agreed with that assumption). She almost never moves at all: she floats, and is content to drift where the current in her tank takes her. She will occasionally push off from something and turn herself around, and seems to prefer being up front where she watches our comings and goings. Through all this, she is very bright and alert! She is quick to make eye contact and is clearly looking around. But doesn't want to move at all. Even this morning when i weighed her, she let me pick her up, weigh her and put her back in the water. She looked at me the whole time, but never budged. Back when she was healthier, I would have to corner her to pick her up, she would try to climb out of the bowl of her scale and always dived off to hide after I put her back in her tank.
So there you have it. Jacques' Mystery Ailment that has the Veterinary School reptile specialists stumped.
But at least one good thing came out of all this. Her tank is in our dining room, and I just knew it was going to be too depressing to sit there everyday, trying to not notice and wonder what's going on with her. So that's what pushed me to get another turtle, and I got NELSON, my adorable baby razor backed musk turtle who is an absolute delight! Both tanks are in my dining room: Nelson's is to my right as i type this, and Jacques' is to my left. I see and talk to Jacques daily and I also get to see Nelson, too.
Life is a funny old thing.
So here we are.
Jacques sends her love to all.
P.S. Since Jacques is "Miss September" in our 2019 TFO calendar, I bought 2 more calendars and sent them to the docs at the Vet School who worked with her. After all, how often do they get to treat an INTERNATIONAL Calendar Girl??!?!? One of the docs was so happy that she phoned me to thank me in person.