good vet experience for treating uri in bp

[Faolan]

i think i have finally found a good vet i trust with my snakes. In the past i have felt scammed by reptile vets, yes i know the difference between vets who treat reptiles and reptile vets, but there are no reptile-only vets anywhere near me. I would like to share my vet experience to help people when they take their balls with uri in for treatment.

I have had a ball python with uri before, none survived unfortunately. So when one of my pets got sick i freaked thinking he would die too, i also believe he may have been infected with the same uri that killed the snakes in the past, you can only do so much to prevent spreading and i did everything i could.
anyways, it started when i brought him home from a friends, luckily he hadn't come into contact with any snakes for months, but when i held him i heard a click and hiss. Hoping it was just him being hissy from the move i set him up comfortably in his terrarium and left him alone. a few days later he had gotten bad so i immediately looked for a home remedy. Firstly, i have spent a lot of money on bringing snakes to the vets and it did me no good, so i wanted to try a home remedy first. secondly, i used the f10 nebulizer in the past and i wanted to see if i could find a better home treatment.
so i started using the vaporub and eucalyptus steam treatment, i took a break from it because i needed him to eat but he still wouldn't eat so i started again. After a few more days i decided it was time to call the vet, i knew a good one i'd taken my rat to when he got fleas so i was willing to try him, and I'm so happy i did.
I called and the receptionist told me he wouldn't be in until Monday and could see me on Wednesday, i told her before i came in i wanted to know how much a culture would be (i would like to thank the members of bp.net for telling me about cultures) and she said i could leave a message for the vet, which i did.
maybe an hour later the vet called me back and we talked for a while and he told me to come at 9:30 the next morning so he could see the snake. He's a great man, he can be informative without sounding pushy or like a know-it-all, and he knows what he's talking about. i told him about the previous snakes I'd lost to uri, mentioning how a previous vet had given me betryl injections and after I'd started administering them she'd stopped eating. The vet explained the reason why was that betryl should not have been given in a shot, only as an oral med, because it causes necrosis and lots of sores and pain if injected in the muscle. I also asked him if it was viral could my snakes survive, I'd read on bp.net that there's no cure for virus uri, but he told me it was treatable with supportive therapy, but that viruses were more expensive to treat and cultures for determining specific viruses cost a lot more that the normal culture which was $140.

when i went to see him he was very kind and gentle with the snake, and he told me everything he wanted to do and exactly why. Originally he was going to do a mouth swab and look at it under a microscope, i believe it's called cytology, to get an idea of what bacteria was there so he could prescribe a good med to give my snake until the culture came back and told us exactly what we were dealing with. He then explained that he'd prefer to do a lung wash and told me exactly what it entailed and how much more it would cost $75, and why we needed it. The reason being there are bacteria in the mouth that may not be in the lungs, so it gave us a more accurate reading. The procedure was quick, it involved him and his assistant putting saline solution into the bps lungs, gently turning him up side down and back up, and sucking the solution back out. we soon decided to give him piperacilin injections for now, cost me $40. has anyone used this before successfully?
now at this time we have some bp's that also have the uri, but don't want to have each one checked and cultured, and the vet agreed it was likely that same bacteria so he would be comfortable giving meds for all the snakes without seeing them as long as he had their weight. He also told me not to give any meds to healthy snakes because it could have a counter affect. he said that when the culture came back he'd give us meds for the rest of the snakes, but he didn't want us buying a lot of expensive medicine and then finding it's the wrong one and not being able to return it. The medicine is preloaded into syringes, and then frozen to be thawed out later and injected. He then said i should do the f10 nebulizer in addition to the meds and after we know what exactly is going on it should take 3-4 weeks of injections once every 3 days and the snakes should all be fine.
hope this helps any people fighting uri in their collections. I'll update it a few weeks to let you know how it turns out.

[Faolan]

It's been almost a week since the culture and the lab was able to isolate two types of bacteria, both immune piperacilin. Strangely the snakes have been getting better since i started injections. The vet said the bacteria could be killed by Betryl which i will give orally and that it should cost only $35 for enough betryl to cure the whole clutch of sick snakes. Looks like we're on the fast track to recovery, but i have to make a choice to continue giving them the piperacillin in addition to the betryl because if i stop i can't start again after the bacteria will have been given a chance to become immune. I have decided to continue the piper as well, not going to take the chance of loosing something that could give them a better chance.
On Tuesday evening I received a fright from my big snake Nini; she was showing no sings of sickness, no clicking or wheezing, just a perfectly healthy snake who had been eating beautifully unlike the other sick snakes. I checked on her on Monday and she was happy and normal as usual, but when i went to nebulize her on Tuesday night i nearly had a heart attack. She was sitting in a position normal for her which her nose poking the top of her box, she always wants to come out and explore, but her neck looked a bit thick. I opened her box and she was puffed up, her neck was swollen like a ratsnakes' but she wasn't regurgitating food because she'd eaten too long ago for that. I soon realized that her neck was swollen because there was mucus in her throat blocking her airway and it was being filled with air like a balloon, there was an especially big bulge an inch down from the back of her head. She literally dripping with drool and there were big bubbles building around her mouth, and there was a nasty smell.
The vet had closed ten minutes ago and i couldn't bring her anywhere else so i was on my own, luckily i have an amazing intuition when it comes to what animals need so i was able to help her. I massaged as much of the mucus out of her as i could and was able to help her breathe in and out, i then put her in the nebulizer and decided the only thing to do was give her the piperacillin so i calculated the weight and decided two shots would be fine and set them to thaw while she was being nebulized.
I think after 40 minutes in the box i took her out and got more mucus out before giving her the injections. After that all i could do was give her an extra heating pad and hope she survived the night. Next day i called my vet and he told me I had been right to give her the injections, that the culture was almost complete, and to expect it by Friday. Thursday he called me and said everything was done, now we're waiting on my friend to give me the weights for all the snakes and then the vet will get started preparing the betryl.