My Experience with a Fatal Viral BP Infection (for those who need advice)

[LindseyVail]

Hello!

In the past 7 months or so I had one of my ball pythons pass away from a viral infection. I wanted to share the story in case anyone needs advice.

Fez was about a year old ball python, with your standard glass tank setup with the standard temps, humidity, etc. One day he started seeming disoriented when we held him, he was pushing his nose on things and such. Over the next few days he spiraled and started moving in a loopy way. We took him to the vet immediately and they thought it might be IBD. We sent in a viral test and got an x-ray and started doing physical therapy and giving antibiotic injections. He stopped being able to strike his food after a few weeks (he kept missing), his eyes went crosseyed, he stopped really thermoregulating or even moving around his tank for that matter. He wasn't drinking so we gave him baths as well. He also couldn't flip over when he was on his back. Every night it was a bath and physical therapy.

After a week or two the results of the IBD test came back negative (however, there was a 20% chance of a false negative). The vet decided to switch to some sort of anti-inflammatory injection (that wasn't an immunosuppresant) instead of antibiotics. He said that the neurological symptoms were coming from swelling of the brain and spinal cord tissue. They also tube-fed him while he was there. The injections helped. His eyes went back to normal, he was able to flip back over when upside down, he was thermoregulating, etc. However, he still couldn't eat even though you could tell he was hungry. He couldn't strike the food because his aim was so bad and even when he got it in his mouth, he dropped it eventually because he didn't have the coordination to slither around in order to eat and fully digest his food. He got down one pinky one time, and it took him over an hour (he was on small rats before he got sick).

After a while we went back to the vet because although there was some improvement, there wasn't a good quality of life by any stretch of the term. We had a conversation with the vet as to whether to put him down or to tube feed him. After many tears and a lot of thinking, we decided to put Fez down. (At this point it had been 6 months since his first symptoms and about 2 or 3 months since he had last eaten a normal meal on his own. We were at a research vet hospital, so they offered to do an autopsy for free. We got a call a few weeks later saying it definitely wasn't IBD and was most likely another infection (which I am unfortunately forgetting the name of right now).

If anyone needs advice on a sick snake, feel free to reach out. I posted some threads about Fez during the ordeal which you should be able to find under my username.