Althea Update + Cool drinking story!

[SuddenEclipse]

Hey doods

Okay, well as some of you my know I've been having a hard time getting Althea straight after a really bad shed. Took her to the store I got her from and the guy said Whoa she seems really dehyrated and thin. So he soaked her, squeezed some poop out (she was really constipated too!!) and then force fed her a small fuzzy to jump start her metabolism. Don't panic, not a force feed down her throat, just hooked it to her teeth so she would eat. She did not regurgitate it and since she appeared to have lost weight I was glad he did it. He thought my tank was too hot for her, so I've re-evaluated some things, rearraged her house, and lowerd the UTH.

Her warm spot where her UTH and her favorite hide is at 90 degrees. The cool parts of her enclosure are right at 78., so she can pretty much pick her temps. (There are 2 hides, but she definitley prefers the one where the UTH is.) Humidity is at 60. Water bowl is plenty big enough for her to fit into (although I realize you guys would say she drinks when I don't see her, I think she's lazy and waits for me to put her near it to drink.) LOL And I have yet to see her soak herself.

So, with all of this being said, her overall look seems to be improving. The tongue is coming back out and she's not so stiff in her back end anymore. She still has some skin hanging around after her not so great shed, but I feel like she looks better and is getting back to normal. YAY! I will buy her a live fuzzy if I can on Wednesday and see if she wants that and if she can eat that then I will try to move her back up to her larger foods the following week. I'm still waiting for a brown poop to come out, but she has been peeing white stuff out quite often. (It's not the pee rocks, and it's not just liquid. It's kind of like the white part of an egg yoke. She's good at that.)

Anyway, here is her cool drinking story (at least I was all happy about it.) This morning I checked in on her and picked her up and put her near her water, but instead of putting her down I just held her, she totally could have just left my hand if she wanted, but instead she decided to let me keep holding her, then she stretched her neck out and drank from her water as I was holding her! I don't know if this is common or not, but it made me feel all special.

Her tail end still has a long wrinkle in it, but part of that may be because she is still holding on to some old skin back there, but the rest of her looks healthy and normal. She is improving every day. I'm trying to leave her alone for a good week and don't want to start really handling her again until she's eating on her own again (this morning was like a 2 minute, "Hey good morning, how you doing" session.)

Soaking her for about 20 minutes every other day seems to help her pee rocks/white stuff (whatever that is) and help her skin and she lets a little more skin off each day. I'm so happy she seems to be feeling better. The real test will be on Wednesday if she will eat on her own. And that's the update!