Totally overwhelmed :(

[Salamander Rising]

Along with all the other stresses I've been dealing with in the last few months, I went to town last night for a very short trip and called my mom to see how my dad was getting along.

He's been in the hospital for leg pain related to his bad back and she told me he was now in a nursing home and to go see him.

So I did and then in the middle of idle chat, he blurts out that they found lung cancer while doing an MRI on his back.

[insert massive psychological shock, here]

So, I was away from home *much* longer than I intended.

What's this have to do with snakes?

Well, there's Bella the Boa who recently had an RI from her terrible mite infestation.

I was told to up her ambient temps and humidity and the only way I can do that in my old, cold, dry house is with my warm mist vaporizer in her condo.

Normally, it takes the thing several hours to get the temps/humidity up to where they should be and I let it run for about 2-3 hours and then shut it off for 6-8 hours.

I was not home to shut it off when it got 'just right' and oblivious hubby said "I thought it looked tropical in there." but didn't bother to call me to ask if that was 'bad' or turn off the humidifier.

When I came home, her ambient temp was 104 degrees!

I'm not sure how 'true' that reading was as applied to her actual physical temps because the digital therm/hygro is right beside the humidifier on her upper deck and the warm moist air bounces off the condo ceiling right down towards it but now I'm terrified Bella got overheated.
[she was on the lower deck on her 'cool side' of 81 degrees with the upper deck forming a 'roof' over her]

I was just out there stroking her head and neck like she loves and she was sort of really leaning and twisting her head into my hand sideways like a cat does when you pet it.

Is that something 'neurological' from the heat or was she just really digging the massage?

I hauled her out and sat with her around me for a bit and she was able to keep her head straight and try to get on top of the fridge and got her face through the handles quite handily which meant turning her sideways to get her face back out.

When I put her back, she crawled around her upper deck with her head flat like normal and slid herself back down to house floor without 'twisting funny'.

Since her RI has improved, she's been much more active, almost to where it looks like she wants out of her house all the time.
[she likes to be out]

She's been pushing her nose into the door cracks a lot and seems generally restless.

The last time she did that, she had mites but she doesn't have them now.

Is it breeding season for Boas?

Bob is a little edgy, too.

This really freak me as my herper friend does shows for the public and during the summer, his helpers let his 30+ year old Boa girl get very overheated and she had a 'head tilt' thing going on for a while but it fine, now.

She was overheated by the sun and ambient heat so I don't know if one is worse than the other.

Bella was in a 'sauna' for a while and I have no idea how long she was in those temps because it takes hours for the humidifier to get the temps above 88 or so due to the size of the condo. [2'x2'4']

I really love her hate and hate myself.

I worked so hard to cure her other problems and now I've possibly 'steamed' her?

I hope this rambling mess makes enough sense for somebody to offer some thoughts.