My retic has a swollen mouth...

Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? Her mouth has been like this for a couple weeks now. Right before it started my retic went after a large rat (pre-killed of course) and slammed her head into the wall of the tub really hard. I'm thinking it may have bruised her mouth? And I've been feeding her extra large rats, she actually had two this week a few days before I took this photo, it seems like maybe the jumbo rats irritated it even more. I was hoping to get a couple large rats in her before she goes off of feed for the next couple months.

She is gravid with eggs so I'm not sure I want to transport her to the vet, but I did send them an e-mail, hoping to send them some photos and hopefully they can tell me what is going on. She has no other symptoms, not lethargic or making sounds, she seems to be her normal self besides this enlargement in her mouth.

Her tub smells fresh and clean, I just needed to do a spot clean in these pics. I did a quick internet search and I didn't see anything similar. She is real mellow, not pushing on the tub or pacing at all. Very strange... She did seem to have a slight pre-ovulation swell this morning.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...en-mouth-1.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...en-mouth-2.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...en-mouth-3.jpg

Holy cows!!! You let it get it that bad!!?? Looks like an abscessed tooth to me or possibly mouthrot but i dont see the cheese usually with mouthrot. Regardless, she needs a vet NOW. And judging by the front of the face around the pits, it looks she has been pushing too from all redness and skin.

Also are you sure she is pregnant? I wouldnt imagine her pushing and doing that to her face if she was pregnant. Did you get an ultrasound done?

But regardless, she needs a vet, pregnant or not. If that gets too bad, it could turn in sepsis and possibly kill her.

And snakes are good at hiding illness until it is too late. In the wild they cant show injury or illness as that is a dinner bell to other animals. That is why us as owners have to be on our toes and look for any strange behavior or 'things'.

And like i said above, it looks to me like she has been pushing judging by the front pits looking split and all the red blood dots around it. Caesar's face looked like that when i tried the 2 weeks feeding but he didnt have the swollen mouth like that. His lip on the side had a very slight bump to it which i watched like a hawk but it went down after he ate.

Have you tried opening her mouth with the stick of a Q-Tip to look inside?

This looks absolutely terrible !!

Honestly, I don't understand you. If this has been looking like this for 2 weeks, why in the world haven't you already been to the vet ? When we breed animals, the adults should be taken care off 100% and not put into danger because the possible offspring may be worth more then they are.

This animal is the one you need to focus on, not her eggs or possible hatchlings you may or may not loose. This animals needs help ! 2 Weeks ago. And why still feeding it with a infection such as that? Even if she accepted the food, you should have left her empty so you don't add regurgitation to the mix if she had gotten even worse and you finally decided to go to the vet. Now is not the time to worry about adding weight, ovulation or eggs.

You say you may have seen a slight pre ovulation swell. Even if that is true, there is still a long way to go until the eggs would come. This animal shouldn't stay in this condition. It doesn't look good. That is a large infection and snakes usually have solid puss that has to be excised before the wound can heal. As to what happened, who knows. She might have broke a took or punctured herself with a tooth or the rats teeth.

Bad infections can quickly go septic and once that goes into the blood, its all but lights out. It looks painful, too.

Actually she doesn't push at all. I'm pretty sure she slammed her face against the side of the tub real hard when she went after that rat, she actually shook the whole rack, it scared the heck out of me LOL. I think it's mostly damage from impact, it pretty much popped up overnight. I probably shouldn't have fed her big rats after that incident. I can tell which snakes are pushers, especially with tubs with windows since I'm down in the snake room every day. And the pushers will move the bedding from the front of the tub and away from the sides. Definitely not a pusher, she is as mellow as they come, except that one day with that one rat LOL. Usually she doesn't get that excited, I usually just lay the rat in the tub and close it up and she slowly goes over and gently eats it. Her mouth actually just looked a little sore, but there wasn't a bulge coming out until I noticed it yesterday, worse today so I called the vet.

I did an ultrasound a couple months ago and I thought her follicles were about 20 mm, but the image was really fuzzy and I wasn't 100% sure. I just did another ultrasound tonight, the results are clear. Her follicles are all less than 9 mm. Looks like she won't go this year after all, bummer. They say it takes retics three years to mature and she is just two and a half now. I had the male in there with her quite a few times. They were in a ball a couple times but I never did see a positive tail lock. The male was ready and he was trying but she just didn't know what was going on LOL.

Here's her ultrasound results from tonight:

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...ollicles-1.jpg

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...ollicles-2.jpg

Actually I don't believe that this is an infection. There is no drainage or puss and she still has an aggressive appetite, in fact she popped up and was in feeding mode tonight when I opened up the tub, not something you would expect from a sick snake. I'm guessing it's just swollen from being bruised, we'll see what the vet says about it. Now that I know she isn't gravid I feel like it's safer to move her without risk of injury, at least injury to the snake, not too sure about injury to the vet LOL.

I would absolutely be freaking out! Vet now like everyone has said.

That is an infection. My big boa got a sinus infection which i didnt notice until the top of nose started swelling. Then i ran her to the vet. She had a fine appetite and acted like a snake but it was an infection. The vet put her on a shot of Fortaz every 3 days for a month and it cleared up. But her nose wasnt even half as bad looking as that poor retics mouth.

Worst case, the antibiotics cause her to lose the eggs. The parent snake is more important like Zina said.

And you can see even the end of her nose is swollen as it is risen up. And the raw looking nose might be from slamming but i dont see it happening just once. Raw looking wounds of big swells like that dont just happen overnight. But hey, your snake. By comparison, you can Caesar's face. How it is smooth along the top of his head to the end of his snout. Also you can see his pits dont have that fleshy kind of torn look to them. Like i said, Caesar had that same look on the pits as yours when he pushed a lot but he also had it on the side pits too as he would run his face up and down the center brace on his AP cage.

And I'm confused, i thought she was gravid?

And the vet will be fine. If he/she is an exotic vet, they have handled far worse tempered animals im sure lol. Heck my vet told me Allison my JCP took a few shots at her and the vet knew she would pull through from the PAM injestion when she did that and was cruising all over her tub lol. Plus, no idea about the temper on you snake but I had to unhook an upper tooth that pierced the upper lip on Caesar and let me tell you, he was not happy about that. I thought he was going to bite me for sure but nope, he just was pissed and shoved my hand away and didnt want anything to do with for 4 days. After that it was like nothing happened haha.
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...90acee8d_h.jpg

There would not be drainage and pus in the same way as a mammalian wound. Reptile pus is a solidified mass. I will say that most of the time if a retic will eat, then it will heal. However, that looks very bad in my opinion. My girls face was at best maybe 1/8 as bad as this recently and I was worried as hell. After hitting the tub as hard as you described I’d worry about broken teeth stuck in the gums


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I'd also be worried about a broken jaw....Rosey once slammed the litter dam on her AP cage going for a rat and i just about had a heart attack and watched her face like a hawk to make sure there was nothing broken. She ended up being ok.

Yeah, definitely either an abscess or swelling from something getting fractured.... I saw this happen to a bci at the shop I used to work at... turned out that the jaw broke and caused an abscess... snake ended up dying and it had only been going on for a few days.....

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

Actually I don't believe that this is an infection. There is no drainage or puss and she still has an aggressive appetite, in fact she popped up and was in feeding mode tonight when I opened up the tub, not something you would expect from a sick snake. I'm guessing it's just swollen from being bruised, we'll see what the vet says about it. Now that I know she isn't gravid I feel like it's safer to move her without risk of injury, at least injury to the snake, not too sure about injury to the vet LOL.

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Like its been said, snakes don't have liquid pus. They have some liquid around the pus sometimes, but the pus is usually a solid mass, much like cottage cheese. It has to be surgically removed. Any injury and swelling around the mouth is particularly painful as well and very prone to a nasty infection.

I lost one of the coolest snake's I've ever had to precisely an infection such as that. And I did take him to the Vet, many times actually, since that was one snake I couldn't give shots to unassisted, he was just to powerful. (BIG Borneo Blood Python) Never ever aggressive, simply tried to get away. Even between the vet and I we had to struggle to hold him still. He too developed the issue after a feeding. He too hit the rat super hard. He had the pus excised twice. But the infection kept spreading despite all we did, despite all the shots. His was on the side of the mouth and it eventually swelled so bad it started to push his eye out. I tried so hard, so did the Vet, but when the poor guy started to cruise his cage back and forth it was time to let him go.

I don't play around with stuff like that.

It means nothing that she still has a feeding response. Its an instinct and she is a retic. If you wait until she won't or can't eat anymore, most likely you will have a septic snake. In your original post you said that "her mouth looked like this for 2 weeks" A simple and uncomplicated swelling would have went down by now. Enlarging the picture you can see a tiny puncture in the middle of the swelling, some reddish but also some whitish discoloration. It looks very painful.

Oh and kind of off topic but i would wait at least 5 years to breed a female of any snake. Give her more time to mature and everything to fully develop and settle in. Last thing you want is a complication and losing her. That's kind of the reason I've been leary about breeding. I thought about breeding Gina when she got about 5 years old which is why i kind of wanted to pick up a male pure Rio Bravo Pokigron from Chris Wolf as well so i could keep the blood line pure but if i lost Gina, i would be crushed. She is far more important to me than any cash or babies she could produce.

Also what no one has mentioned is it looks like one of her forks on the tongue is hanging out. I bet her mouth is so swollen she cant even put the tongue into the jacobsens organ anymore. Hopefully it doesnt impaire her breathing too.

Anyways, good luck man and get that poor snake to a vet asap.

Boy I sure hope her jaw isn't fractured, I didn't even think about that. She is so big she sure has some power to her. If the vet has an X-ray machine that would tell you for sure. If she died I would cry my eyes out, she is my favorite snake, truly a gentle giant. I'm off to the vet ASAP, wish her luck!

Wishing this beautiful young lady a speedy recovery, poor thing looks like it must be terribly painful ~healing hugs from across the miles ~ hope all goes well at the vet .

Wish you all the best, hope that girl is okay. :(

That's most likely just some bad pushing. Yes I've seen the gum swollen and protrude like that from pushing. It's amazing how fast a retic will mess up their own face. Although it could be an injury from striking so hard at the rat. Neosporin, try to figure out why she was pushing and see if you can stop her. Not a bad idea to see the vet at this point since it is rather swollen. Good luck with her!

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

Boy I sure hope her jaw isn't fractured, I didn't even think about that. She is so big she sure has some power to her. If the vet has an X-ray machine that would tell you for sure. If she died I would cry my eyes out, she is my favorite snake, truly a gentle giant. I'm off to the vet ASAP, wish her luck!

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It may not be as bad as all that, but it certainly is time for some veterinarian intervention, esp. with how long this has been going on with no sign of improvement.

I will cross my fingers and toes that she will recover quickly.

Please keep up up to date. Pictures of the vet wrestling with the snake will get bonus points ;)

re-reading your (OP) response, if you are sure she's not pushing, then it probably was an injury from striking. Which means there is probably a cut somewhere on the jaw where it's swollen which should be addressed by a vet. (It just really looks like what I've seen before in a bad pusher.)

Well the vet looked at my retic Lucy, he said that it's either from trauma or could be a tumor, possibly cancer. He said if it popped up suddenly it's probably trauma and we should watch it closely. If it gets bigger he will try to drain it. But if it's a tumor there's not much we can do about it. I'm also going to use a Reptifogger and use some diluted F10 vapor for 20 minutes per day for a couple weeks to give her a fighting chance while she recovers, I figure it can't hurt. Wish me luck!

Oh my I hate the idea of this gorgeous girl having cancer that must have made your heart stop for a second, so did he give her antibiotics to see if it is just an infection? Will say prayers for the both of you :tears:breaks my heart ~healing hugs from across the miles ~

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

Well the vet looked at my retic Lucy, he said that it's either from trauma or could be a tumor, possibly cancer. He said if it popped up suddenly it's probably trauma and we should watch it closely. If it gets bigger he will try to drain it. But if it's a tumor there's not much we can do about it. I'm also going to use a Reptifogger and use some diluted F10 vapor for 20 minutes per day for a couple weeks to give her a fighting chance while she recovers, I figure it can't hurt. Wish me luck!

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So...he did no actual diagnostics? That is disappointing and must be frustrating. If there is an infection it will need more then what the fogger and diluted F10 is going to provide. If there is no infection, that is just additional stress she doesn't need.

With the severity of this and having popped up right after she slammed her head, I figured he would want to do x-rays to rule out breaks. And all it would have taken is a needle and syringe to see if any liquid could be aspirated. Which in turn (even if hardly anything came out) could have been looked at under the microscope. Sometimes you can see cells that are indicative of cancer. Or other issues.

If this is pus, there will be nothing your vet can "drain" per say, it will need to be surgically removed.

I'm not fussing at you, trust me. I'm just puzzled the vet would send you home without the most basic of diagnostic tests, and therefor missing the chance for some basic treatments depending on the issue.

Not sure I'd be happy with that.

But all that matters is that you are.

Still wishing all the best for the poor, poor girl. My heart goes out to her, that just looks so painful. She has the same name as I do, Lucy..

Kind of surprised how little it sounds like the vet did too. When i took Rosey in for the sinus infection, my vet took a sample of the goo from the lump in her nose and from there Id'd it as a bacterial sinus infection. Also looked inside her mouth to make sure it didnt eat through the flesh into the mouth area i guess. Not exactly sure as I am not a vet but i guess sinus infections can spread into the mouth and bone etc. She said everything looked good for what it was and gave me the month worth of Fortaz shots. She then told me, if i was scared or worried about giving shots, i could bring Rosey in every 3 days with one of the shots and a nurse would give it to her for me but i was fine doing it myself as Rosey is big.

If the vet just looked at it and said 'meh' more or less, i would have asked them if they arent going to do an x-ray or at least take a sample of the lump to see what it was. I think, you need a new vet and a second opinion. Just my opinion.

Wow! I think everything has been said that needs said. I wish you luck and hopefully your retic heals.

Just wanted to give an update on this girl. I removed the coconut husk substrate and replaced it with white butcher paper. Then I fogged with F10. The swelling got a little bit worse and then it 'popped' and drained. And just two days with F10 and it has gone down to where you can hardly see it! Looks like she is on the road to recovery. Here's a video showing my F10 fogging:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gbSoYh3ds

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Originally Posted by cchardwick

Just wanted to give an update on this girl. I removed the coconut husk substrate and replaced it with white butcher paper. Then I fogged with F10. The swelling got a little bit worse and then it 'popped' and drained. And just two days with F10 and it has gone down to where you can hardly see it! Looks like she is on the road to recovery. Here's a video showing my F10 fogging:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gbSoYh3ds

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So it sounds like the vet was an idiot, the F10 did nothing and the abscess got so big it finally burst. I still would personally look for a competent vet and get her mouth looked at. But at least the abscess popped an drained, so i guess that is a plus.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

So it sounds like the vet was an idiot, the F10 did nothing and the abscess got so big it finally burst. I still would personally look for a competent vet and get her mouth looked at. But at least the abscess popped an drained, so i guess that is a plus.

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Speaking from experience - if it didn't all drain out the infection will come back and need antibiotics to clear up.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

Speaking from experience - if it didn't all drain out the infection will come back and need antibiotics to clear up.

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I agree. I was more just saying at least the pressure from the abscess relieved. Still need to see a vet though and get antibiotics. Heck, I'm pretty paranoid and run my pets to the vet for anything lol. And also would be good to know what actually caused the abscess.

Wouldn't a popped abscess result in a semi-open wound that would be VERY prone to infection?

The thing is, most of the pus forms a semi solid mass. There may be some liquid around it, but whatever drains out of there (esp. on its own) is by far not all that is in there.

Putting F10 fog in there is not getting the meds where it needs to go. First of all, isn't the concentration of the F10 that is sold in the US the wrong one for fogging??

If anything, that should help respiratory issues by getting the sanitizer near the lung tissue.

So, the vet thought it may be a tumor, but now thinks respiratory ?? But it behaves and looks like an abscess? And he did no diagnostics, its all guess work ? No treatment other then send you home to do fogging?

An abscess has to be cleaned out completely and thoroughly. Which in a reptile means excising (draining liquid, scooping solids, flushing thoroughly). After which there should be antibiotic injections, so the meds go where needed. An abscess harbors nasty bacteria.

The fogging is not going to get all the infected necrotic tissue out.

If anything, if you are extremely lucky, the snake will simply survive on her own. Not due to F10. If you are unlucky, that bacteria will keep growing and the infection will turn her septic.

I would find a vet that is willing to actually DO something, instead of risking that snakes life by DIYing her...

But that's just what I would do ;)

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Originally Posted by zina10

The thing is, most of the pus forms a semi solid mass. There may be some liquid around it, but whatever drains out of there (esp. on its own) is by far not all that is in there.

Putting F10 fog in there is not getting the meds where it needs to go. First of all, isn't the concentration of the F10 that is sold in the US the wrong one for fogging??

If anything, that should help respiratory issues by getting the sanitizer near the lung tissue.

So, the vet thought it may be a tumor, but now thinks respiratory ?? But it behaves and looks like an abscess? And he did no diagnostics, its all guess work ? No treatment other then send you home to do fogging?

An abscess has to be cleaned out completely and thoroughly. Which in a reptile means excising (draining liquid, scooping solids, flushing thoroughly). After which there should be antibiotic injections, so the meds go where needed. An abscess harbors nasty bacteria.

The fogging is not going to get all the infected necrotic tissue out.

If anything, if you are extremely lucky, the snake will simply survive on her own. Not due to F10. If you are unlucky, that bacteria will keep growing and the infection will turn her septic.

I would find a vet that is willing to actually DO something, instead of risking that snakes life by DIYing her...

But that's just what I would do ;)

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I would fallow this advice if was me. Just saying......

Zina10 once again nails it. All I can say if it were me, that vet and I would have a come to Jesus discussion. Honestly he took your money and laughed as you left. DIYing......smh.

Wild take here but I'm going to take a guess... 1) you didn't take her to a vet because no vet would recommend that. 2) you let it get that bad, and 3) you let it get worse.

Wish all the Snakes & Money you have invested I can’t believe you haven’t found a A+++ Vet. Thank god the swelling went down, but he gave you less advice as some of the keepers on here.... look into a great Retile vet in your State. Best of Luck to Lucy and recovery.


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