It appears that most life lesson I learn have to be learned the hard way. I am going to tell you a cautionary tale that may or may not have a happy ending.
At the end of July I picked up a big beautiful bee female from someone on craigslist. I got it knowing it had mites, that wasn't a problem for me having tangled with mites before. I treated her for mites and pretty much left her alone. At one point I thought she might have had the start of a RI. During this period I was 2 hours away from my reptiles during the week and couldn't check on her often. At the end of September I moved back to WI and once everyone got settled in, I realized that I was correct and the bee had the start of an RI.
After giving her a once over I decided that it wasn't too bad. She was in a tank before I moved back and I though being in a tub with temps that were better regulated it might go away. My vet had told me previously that sometimes snakes get very minor RIs that most keepers don't notice and they cure up on their own. During this whole time she ate regularly and generally seemed fine. Last night I felt compelled to check on her again. I pulled her lip down on the side and saw that it looked like she had some gooey saliva in her mouth (I wouldn't go so far as to call it mucus). Today I called the vet to schedule an appointment and they were able to get me in about an hour after I called. I left work early and went home to pack her up.
Once we had reached the vet I unboxed her in the exam room. She started acting much worse than I had seen in the past. She was open mouth breathing and for lack of a better word coughing. I am fully convinced that a snake coughing is the most horrible sight I have ever seen. Her head went right up, her mouth opened and she looked like she had a seizure while admitting a sound that can only be described as the sound of death.
I honestly thought my snake had up and died right there in front of me. The vet tech came in before she did it again and was able to see what was happening. It happened a few more times before the vet came in. She was choking to death on mucus. For about 30 minutes she and the vet went through the cycle of he would clean the mucus from her glottis and she would cough up more. She was unable to get a good breath in during this time. Once she stopped the cycle of coughing the vet stuck a small tube down her glottis and gave her a few good breaths with an air bag. After that she just laid there and didn't move but she was breathing. Even with us moving around her she didn't react unless touched and even then it wasn't much of a reaction.
Her prognosis isn't good. She has some bacteria in the mucus she is spitting up but that doesn't mean it isn't a viral infection. The vet gave me three options, 1.) treat it as a bacterial infection 2.) take a tissue sample and send it out for analysis that wouldn't test for all possible viral causes 3.) put her down and do a necropsy to ascertain the risk she poses to the other snakes in my apartment. I ultimately decided on option 1 because the tissue sample testing was costly and could take up to a month to get results. I didn't consider option 3 because I feel she deserves a fighting chance regardless of the risks she poses to everyone else, it is my fault it progressed this far and I need to at least try to save her.
She was put on a combination of medications and I have a follow-up appointment scheduled in a two weeks. My vet said she is either going to improve or pass away within the next two weeks (also why we didn't do option 2). I am hopeful she will improve. While she looked half dead as we were leaving the vet but she seems a little better now and is more active. If she passes before her next appointment I will have a necropsy done to determine the risk of anyone else getting sick. None of my other animals appear sick but as I learned from this you can never be too sure.
The lesson to learn here is don't take a chance, if something appears even slightly wrong it's time to see a vet because it's probably worse than you think it is. My mistake might cost this girl her life and I feel horrible about that.
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