So my sweet 3 year old BEL came to me with an RI and I'm at a point now where I have to decide whether to wait a bit more or do a second round of antibiotics. I got her in early December and shortly noticed a slight popping sound. This became worse over the next few days and so I brought her in to the vet on the 8th. She was diagnosed with a mild RI and given a 14 day rx for Claforen to try and just catch it early and knock it out (while being a less potent antibiotic it had less risk of scarring on an all-white snake). 2 weeks later and she was not fully cleared up, though she was much better. Just a slight popping and a little fluid discharge if her head was below her body. Vet did a culture and advised to wait a couple weeks and see if it cleared up the rest of the way.
It's now been 2 weeks since the end of the antibiotics and the culture results are back. The main causative organism for the infection was one susceptible to the claforen and the vet thinks it was properly knocked out. They did find two more rare organisms: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and Achromobacter xylosoxidans, which my vet said she had never encountered before, but are uncommon and usually associated with infections obtained while in a hospital or in wet/damp environments. At this point, my vet thinks we should try a stronger antibiotic, but she isn't in a huge rush.
I feel like I should wait another couple of weeks, as her symptoms are still improving and it seems like she is slowly getting better. She is acting normal and staying on her hot spot most of the time. She hasn't pooped since I got her and she hasn't peed even in several weeks (at least no noticeable urates. She did manage to eat a medium rat two nights ago and acts normal when I take her out of the cage. I raised her temps to a hotspot of 95 and ambient of 80 at the vet's recommendation and humidity is around 60%. She has not lost any weight either.
Any advice is appreciated.
Wintre says "thanks!"
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