Saving William Wallace, my poor VERY septic ball python!

Hi everyone,

I have recently come into possession of a very badly neglected ball python. His name is Wallace, first name William, for reasons you're sure to understand soon. I was told he is about 5 years old but I don't know for sure. He was obviously neglected for a LONG time and kept in terrible conditions because when I got him he had spots of red and had little patches of skin that appeared infected. He was also very very skinny, listless and wasn't eating. I tried for a while to get him to eat but he wouldn't take it. After a couple months of trying to just get him to eat and keeping him in a clean cage with proper temp and humidity his condition slowly got worse but I did finally get him to eat. Soon after that he shed his skin so I assumed that the reason he wasn't eating was cause he was getting ready to shed. Anyway, when he shed his skin, a BIG patch of skin on his tail came off with the old skin, exposing parts that should never be exposed. It looked like someone had taken a potato peeler and shaved part of his skin off. It was bloody and gross and just hanging off. I cut that dead and disgusting flap off from what little it had left attached so it didn't tear further, attempted to clean it the best I could with some saline and clean water and immediately called a highly reviewed exotic pet hospital in my area (I probably should have done this much sooner but alas, I am not a python expert :( so I didn't ...that part is my fault). So, I took him in and she basically told me that his prognosis was guarded at best and that it was most likely going to cost me a lot to save him, and thought that it was unlikely he would survive but if I was willing to shell out the cash she never gives up on reptiles and has seen some bounce back from pretty terrible things.

I decided it was my duty to revive him to health and bit the bullet. I shelled out 721 bucks then and there for three days of hospitalization, fluid w/ vitamin B therapy, a blood culture, a chem panel, analgesic (anti-pain) injections, amikacin (antibiotic) injections, ceftazidime (antibiotic) injections, hydromorphone (anti-pain) injections, a fecal analysis, wound treatment and silvadene (antibiotic ointment for wound dressing). The official diagnosis is as follows:

- Sepsis, severe wasting (weight: 0.312 kg / 0.69 lbs!?!?! :()
- Complete blood count: Anemia
- Plasma Chem: elevated potassium and other analytes suggestive of dehydration and possibly renal compromise

After three days of fluid therapy and antibiotic/anti-pain injections they said he was more active and was ready to come home with a plethora of instructions on how to soak him daily, clean his wounds, give him his injections, keep him in proper conditions and feed him. After a week or so the blood culture came back with a susceptible E.Coli bacteria so the vet recommended I take him off the amikacin and get a refill of ceftazidime, which I did. I've been doing all that stuff for about a month now (daily soaks, flushing wounds with saline, dressing with silvadene, injections every 3rd day, keeping cage very clean and changing papers every single day, refilling water, etc.) I also cleaned everything in his cage and removed anything that could possibly have had any chance of reinfection and took out all the normal stuff you'd find in a snake's cage to be replaced with a simple cardboard hide (so he doesn't scrape off more skin on the fake rock one) and a fake branch/tree thing, and have been replacing the newspapers/paper towels daily. I even give the little guy water from my Brita pitcher lol. It seems now that the redness has started to clear up and the bad patch of skin on his tail has started to heal (VERY slowly). He still has not pooped (so I haven't gotten the fecal analysis yet) but he has eaten twice (once a week after I brought him home from the vet and once tonight), since he came home. Also, when he came home, he literally drank as much water as a human. I filled his water dish up right before putting him in his cage and he drank 3/4 of it in a single sitting so he must have been very dehydrated also. I assumed that meant he was feeling better.

So anyway, the reason I'm posting here is he seems to have one last issue that I plan to call the vet about tomorrow but also wanted some opinions from others. On the side of his tail opposite the badly ulcerated side, he had a couple small patches of ulcerated skin which are scabbed over and starting to heal now, but it seems he's developed some pretty large blood filled blisters on that side. I remember reading a while ago when I was looking after him that sometimes a snake with septicemia will get these blisters and that you're not supposed to open them because the blood inside can spread the necrosis if it gets on the surrounding skin. Because of that I left them alone for a while but they got to the point that they looked like they would burst if he scraped them on anything so I decided to play snake vet (it was a weekend and the vet was closed, so it was the best I could do at the time) and drain them with one of the tiny syringes from his ceftazidime. I successfully withdrew about five syringes full (250ml total) of blood/fluid from under the skin and flattened the blisters without getting any blood at all on his surrounding skin and then covered the entire area with silvadene after soaking and flushing with saline per his usual regimen. He didn't seem to mind the procedure at all and I felt better because I knew it was cleaned/disinfected and they weren't going to tear open and rip off. The problem is, a couple days later they are full of blood again :( So that's why I'm calling the vet tomorrow (actually I may wait until Monday just to see if he poops over the weekend since then I can bring the fecal sample with me too but I'll decide after reading some of your responses) but I wanted to know what your thoughts are. I looked up some images of blister disease and I don't know if that's what this is but there are definitely some big giant blisters on him in a couple spots and I don't want to drain them anymore since I'm not a doctor and I have no idea if snakes produce more blood or if I will kill him by draining all his blood, lol.

Anyway so that's the long story, I'm still working with the vet (this little guy better appreciate it cause the bill is approaching $1k!) but I'm concerned about the blisters in the mean time and wanted to know what your thoughts are or if there's a way to safely drain them or if the skin needs to be cut off by the vet or something. Maybe he needs a skin graft? lol I don't know...but as you can probably tell by now this is why his name is Wallace. He is named after the warrior from Braveheart! The only difference is that Wallace died in the end and mine will hopefully survive! I know he has a long road ahead of him but it seems like he's moving forward, slowly.

Any thoughts?

Thanks everyone!

Sounds like he was incredibly lucky you found him! Hopefully someone else with more experience will be able to give you advice, but I will say that pictures always help with these types of questions. Good luck in his recovery! He seems like he is in very capable hands :gj:

All the best to William.

Sounds like you've got a good head on your shoulders and a competent vet to assist you. You're a special person for undertaking this task. :gj:

You are a very good person for helping this poor baby. It is people like you that restores my faith in humanity. I have pretty much given on people being kind and good. This post has changed my mindset a little bit. Thank you for what you are doing. You are a kind soul and you will be rewarded greatly.

It sounds like you're really going to bat for this animal, which is amazing. There's another user here named Nixon who has been doing an amazing job of bringing a sick and injured ball python back from the brink, so you should look up her thread. It's called something like "Help, my ball python's scales just split". It's a long read, but I hope it's at least encouraging.

Good luck, and please let us all know how it goes!

Good for you for going all out for the little one !!

I do have some questions, though. I used to do "snake rescue" so have had some experience with treating sick snakes. And vet visits.

So, the snake is or was right around 300 gr., correct ? That is pretty small. Sounds like he is suffering from Blister disease and probably a bunch or other things due to neglect.

What I don't understand is this..you said the vet did fluid therapy, yet the snake was so dehydrated that it drank about as much as a human upon coming home from the vet? I would ask the vet about that, normally after fluid therapy the body is flush with fluid.

Also, you said that you withdrew 250 ml. of fluids from the blood blisters ? That is almost his weight in fluid , he can't possibly even have that much fluid, did you perhaps mean 25 ml ? I'm just confused and quite worried for your snake. If you really did get 250 ml of fluid (which would weigh about 250 gr, so almost his own weight) what has he got left in him ? And you said the blisters refilled again ?

Very worrisome. Is there anyway you could post pictures so we could see what you are dealing with ?

But yes, you are in so deep, at this point I would go right back to the Vet, something seems very wrong.

Sorry you are dealing with this. Glad however that the little guy is getting the care he needs. Kudos to you. Until the sepsis is eradicated the snake will continue to have opportunistic outbreaks. I would cease draining any blisters. All snakes will take extended time to heal adequately. The anemia and the blisters are both secondary to the blood infection (sepsis). Being on the correct medication and hydration is crucial. Great job and i hope he continues to improve. What is he getting in the way of nutrition? That needs to be addressed by the vet as well bc that will aid in recovery.

This link may also be helpful.
http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Rept...-C-Deficiency/

Good luck.

Hi everyone,

First of all thanks for the kind words and good thoughts for Mr. Wallace! Secondly yes you are right, I got the measurement wrong! I withdrew with a U-100 syringe which is actually 0.5ml per syringe (50 "units") ... So it was actually 2.5ml, not 250ml, thank god! So don't worry about that. I am calling the vet again first thing Monday morning. I wanted to give it through the weekend to see if he popped first but he hasn't yet. Anyway I will call first thing Monday and get him back in. In the mean time here are some pictures:

Whew...that is good to know. I was worried that it may have been 25 ml (instead of 250) even that would have been terrible.
2.5 sounds more like it.

Good thing you are going back to the Vet, it sounds like more intervention is needed. Those infections are just so very nasty :(

Oh, and the pictures didn't come through...

Continued well wishes for the little one..

Lol, sorry about that. I was planning to just upload them from my phone and edit the post, but then the stupid app on my phone hung so I posted that and they never uploaded, then I went to edit the post and put them in and couldn't find the damn edit button. So...anyway here:

How his tail looked the day I brought him home from the vet: http://i.imgur.com/oqcMh90.jpg
How his tail looks now: http://i.imgur.com/rvYHfoH.jpg
One of the blisters on his side: http://i.imgur.com/LUhi97h.jpg

There are a few more blisters in various places around his body, but that's definitely the biggest one. that's the one most of the fluid came out of but the next day or so it was filled back up again. It seems to subside when he's laying flat as if the fluid disperses around under his skin ... I'm worried if he sheds his whole back half is going to be raw or something :(

Those look almost like burns to me.

oh my.

That poor, poor baby :( This is really, really bad. But you already know that.

All I can say, I send all my good thoughts and vibes your way, it would be so wonderful if that poor baby could pull through !!!

But yeah, gosh, its bad...

But there is hope, he ate !!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bcr229

Those look almost like burns to me.

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I can assure you the majority of the damage is not burns, because it happened after I got him and the only thing hot in his cage was the heat lamp on top which has a recessed bulb sitting well above the mesh and he never went near it anyway. I can't say though that maybe he didn't get burned before, and the burns got infected and that's what caused the sepsis, that's definitely a possibility, but the huge chunk missing from his tail was definitely ripped off because I noticed it literally hanging off his body :(

Poor little guy must have been in a lot of pain!

I am also going to ask about nutritional supplements and more fluid therapy, as well as why he drank so much as soon as he got home. Anyway he's still slithering ... the snake version of "still kickin'" so hopefully he'll continue to get better. He's eaten three times since this ordeal started so hopefully he will start to put some weight back on and get his metabolism going again which will help him heal! I'll post updates as we move forward :)

Thank you to whoever suggested reading the thread by Nixon BTW! That was a looooong read but gave me some hope! I feel like Dave and Wallace are gonna be bros!

Just an update for everyone!

Wallace finally pooped and the fecal sample came back positive for pinworms, so he is going to be dewormed on Tuesday. At that time we're also going to evaluate a potential tertiary round of antibiotics to deal with the blisters and any other lingering issues. Overall though, his skin is healing and the redness that was chronic throughout his body is finally almost completely faded away. When he goes for his recheck on Tuesday we'll have a new weight also to see if he has gained any weight! It seems like he's improving a little bit each day and luckily the last time he shed was right when this whole thing started so he should have a while before he needs to shed again which will make the skin healing process much easier. Anyway, that's the info I have as of right now. I'll provide another update soon!