Uber the pastel BP hatchling's surgery GRAPHIC!!!

[wolfy-hound]

This thread contains pictures of surgery. If you are squeemish, please back out of the thread and feel free to PM me to ask about the surgery. Everyone else feel free to leave comments here.

"Uber" is the single hatchling from Genevieve, the pastel male with extreme blushing. HIs story and pics are here:
http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...tchling-pastel

Uber had a retained yolk, or a "hard belly"/"hard yolk". Unlike many hard yolk cases, Uber's was twice the width of his body and therefor, he could not pass it. I hoped at first that he would continue to absorb it, or it would break down and be absorbed. No such luck.

I talked to my vet a bit, talked to one of the other vets a bit, and finally the main vet said he would be willing to do surgery. We looked up the very few cases he could find, and found a few success stories(2, with another 1 ending with a dead hatchling from the attending vet "accidentally" cutting the major veins without noticing??).

Uber, weighing a teeny 42grams at hatching, had lost a great deal of weight in the last two weeks. Up to the last two weeks, he was looking "the same" so I was still offering tiny meals, which he refused. He was active throughout, drinking and climbing about his bin with great energy.

At 48 days old, Uber underwent actual surgery to remove the yolk. Following are the pictures of the procedure.

First, the vet tried the anesthesia gas. Figuring Uber was so very small, we put him into the mask itself, hoping he would inhale enough. (Gas is not usually reccomended for reptiles as they breathe SO slow that it takes forever to work).



After about 30+ minutes of gas, the tech and I were closer to being asleep. After a larger dose, Uber seemed to get extremely sleepy, although he was patently not unconscious yet. We switched to a custom made(read: custom cobbled together that day) snake hatchling sized anesthesia mask. I had to hold the tubing in place and occasionally gently hold Uber's head to it, although he was almost asleep.



Uber SEEMED asleep, until poked, so the vet eventually gave him an injected anesthesia drug which knowked him down nearly instantly. Then he was restrained for surgery. Not having paws to tie apart to stabalize the animal, they taped him to a clipboard. Yes... I made sure the tape wasn't too sticky.



Incision made, you can already see the retained yolk.


Yolk being removed,


Healthy looking innards(yes, that's the technical term, give me a break, it's been a LONG couple days)


Stitching up the incision.


Post-op, covered with a towel to keep the warmth from the heated surgical table, Uber is breathing oxygen.


I got to stand there as the 'snake handler' and hold the mask on Uber's head. Then I stood there for well over a hour and a half waiting for Uber to wake up. Finally the vet checked up on how long it should take for a reptile to wake up and found it can take over 22 hours! So I brought Uber home to a warm clean bin to rest.

We could only watch for a heartbeat by seeing the actual 'lub lub' movements under his scales in the right spot. Breathing was so low and slow that it was undetectable much of the time.

Since this all finished up yesterday afternoon, I've been checking on Uber in his bin, and he's still not awake. He IS still breathing(more) and his heart is beating, and as of THIS evening, he has moved a tiny bit. He's still pretty much unconscious acting though, so he's definitely not out of the woods yet.

Once he wakes up, we still have to try to get food into him too. His first meal(after a few days to recover) will be a tube-fed slurry, rather than asking him to actually eat a prey item.

Before anyone asks, no, you do NOT want to know how much it cost me for the surgery. I would NEVER expect someone else to get surgery on a "$50 hatchling". It's something I chose to do for Uber, as I really feel he's special. Sometimes we do get attached to a baby that isn't slated to make it, and we go as far as we need to in order to give them the best chance of survival. It's not rational, it's emotional. I know. I don't care. If Uber does die, then I'll have the most expensive shoestring ever, but I still won't regret giving him every chance to make it.

I won't feel at all like anyone else should do the same. In fact, I'd be the first to say "It's not economical to do surgery on a hatchling." Don't ever expect to see me say "Well, *I* took my hatchling to surgery!" as a prod for someone else to do the same. Basic vet care is required.... specialty exotics surgery on a baby that has a miniscule chance of surviving? Not so much.

At any rate, I thought surgery on a 'hard belly' hatchling might be interesting to some folks, so here's the thread! Feel free to comment. I'll put updates on how Uber does(or doesn't do).