So, Noel has been on the new medication since Thursday, and we had an appointment today for Dr. C to see how she was doing. He sort of peeked his head in the door and said "well?".

I grinned at him and said that there was improvement for the first time, and he burst into a huge smile and said "give me that little bugger!!" Of course he set her down on the cold table and she promptly annointed the table with pee! LOL

He was very happy with her progress, I asked him if he thought another steroid shot would help, and he agreed, so she got a cortosine (sp?) shot and was sent on her way. I asked if he wanted to see her again, he said only if she started to fail again - but then ammended it to, he'd love to see her when she was healthy again, so he could see how well she was doing.

I thanked him profusely for never giving up on her and he said "aww, I like rats. But I REALLY like THIS rat!" So, I was at the payment desk (just charged for the shot) and the gal joked "the rat doctor"! I said "Dr C, if I had insisted on putting her to sleep last Thursday, you were going to abscond with her and take her home with you weren't you?" He said "yeah, actually I had already decided that I really wanted to save her - she's a sweetheart and deserved every chance she could get. I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night if I knew we hadn't tried everything".

So the COOL thing was he said "let me ask you a huge favor. Will you take some pictures of your enclosures and write up something on how to properly house ball pythons so that I can write up a brochure to give to other ball python owners who are having problems with getting theirs to eat? You're the only one I know who has non-fasters, so I know you're doing something right!"

Of course I agreed, and I plan to also put something about checking out ball-pythons.net if they need more information on the care of their ball pythons.

I'm also the person Dr. C has on speed dial if any of his clients decide to surrenender their ball pythons!

I love my vet!