(TW: written gore) Difficult BP + Horrifying Nightmares: What next?

[smakemom]

first of all, thank you very much for such a detailed response.

when he ate at the breeder's, it was about two years ago, and he was kept in a rack and fed a live rat. I don't know the details beyond that, unfortunately.

And yes, the vet did have me force feed him recovery dog food; she said it was densely packed with nutrition and would help him regain weight. i no longer do this, and i stopped a few weeks ago. this is also my third exotic veterinarian. if there is some list of names out there of reputable veterinarians by area, that would be great, but at this point, I don't know if it's even worth it. At the very least, I would like to know where to take him in the event of a life or death situation. Hopefully she would know what to do, but honestly, I don't know that she would. if it helps with recs, i'm smack dab between the cincinnati and columbus areas of ohio.

I have stopped force feeding him completely. I have not been handling him, with the sole exception being that I moved him out of his hide today so that I could check all of his hides for feces, and it looked clean, so I put him right back and closed the tank back up.

I actually made a mistake before when I listed his heating elements as ceramic heat emitters. that's what I used when I was a new keeper. He has three deep heat projectors. The temperatures have stabilized now, it was just unstable when I had just freshly changed everything (and forgot to plug a light back in, oops). It does get a little cooler at night, but not dramatically so. His tank is in front of a window, so the heaters work a lot less hard in the daytime, but do all they can at night.

fortunately, the nightmares have stopped, and I feel calmer about him, but this has definitely hurt my love for ball pythons specifically. I would like to get other snakes in the future, but I think this will be my first and last ball python. i don't want to go through this more than once- not to this degree, at least. That being said, I'm very grateful for everyone's help. I know not every ball python is like this, and maybe he won't be this way forever. Who knows.

I hope I covered everything in your message. Thank you very much for your advice, and I'll do my best to adhere to it.