I hope this NEVER happens to you!

[AnniesMom]

This is Jake.
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225JakeFace.jpg

He is a wonderful snake that has had a really rough time of it. This is what I have to do to him twice a day for the next 3 weeks.
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225JakeFace_1.jpg

http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225JakeFace_2.jpg

This is all a result of a mouth rot infections gone awry. :( The vet needed to open his face up again because all of the tissue under his old stitches http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/500/3225Jake_Stitches_1.jpg went necrotic and only the scales were holding his face together. The hope now is that with injectible antibiotics and twice daily cleaning that there will be no place for an abcess to form again. I will hopefully know by Monday if this is working. If it is not, I will probably have to put him down as there is nothing else that can be done. I really don't want to have to, but it is no life at all to continue to cut his face away. He, and I, are running out of options.

I really hurts me to have to consider putting him down, but I must be realistic. If his life is only going to be constant pain and surgery, that is no life at all. I also do not have a bottomless check book to continue to pay for it. I considered putting him up for adoption, but is it fair to pawn an unhealthy animal off on someone? I almost think that is why I go him so cheaply. i don't know. This ****ing sucks!
Tracy

[crazykeeper]

Thats too bad,I hope he pulls through so you do not have to put him down.Our thoughts are with you.

[Linds]

Poor guy. He's been enduring this all for a very long time. Kudos to you for sticking with it all, many people would've dumped them a while back.

I'm just wondering if there isn't something the vet was missing/doing wrong. I've dealth with large facial absesses (yup, the kind where they are missing a giant hole out of their face) before and never experienced the healing problems you and Jake are having to endure. He is being kept in a sterile-type setup for all this treatment, right?

[AnniesMom]

When this started, him and Honey Bun had been housed together, but they are seperated now. Jake is in his own cage, brand new custom built by me. It has a newspaper substrate, a water dish and a hide. That's all. It's 3/4" plywood with a sealed lino tile floor. Prior to this cage, he was housed in a giant aqaurium with newspaper substrate and no decorations. The temps are are on the higher range to encourage his immune system. Both vets that have treated him approve his housing as being as sterile as I can make it. All his previous treatment up till this new hole was performed by Chris Collis in Victoria and, yes, he is a herp vet. The newest treatment was done by Eric I-can't-spell-his-last-name in Sooke and he is also a herp vet. The only differences between the two vets is one feels that all herp treatment needs to be done with anthestic, and the other feels that some can be done without. Both vets are confused as to why Jake is such a slow healer. Perhaps when the first surgery was done, there may have been some caseous material left in the wound and because it was closed, it was allowed to fester and grow into another abcess?

[Linds]

Poor boy. Snakes are slow healers in the first place so it can take a while,, but this is a long while even still. Perhaps a different antibiotic is in order. If the Baytril isn't doing the trick...

Good luck with him. I do hope he can kick himself up and through this ordeal :/

[Scales Zoo]

When our rescue boa fang had to go to the vet, he didn't heal very well after the first surgery either. They were giving him injectable baytril and the old abscess site still necrotized.

They opened him back up, and used an antibiotic ball that they enclosed inside the hole in his face. I can check to see what it was called. It worked, and while he still lives with an elvis smile - he recovered magnificantly and was daddy to our litter of boas a month ago.

Ryan

[AnniesMom]

So far, he has been on oral Baytril twice, injectible Genthro twice and now injectible Baytril. I just finished cleaning the site and there was new necrotized tissue in there. The tissue has seperated between the jaws and the scales. I will try and show with a picture.

*Ryan, if you could find out what that anitbiotic ball is called that would be awesome. I'm taking him back to the vet on Monday for a recheck, and I am hoping that there has been some improvement.

*Lindsay, we have tried the Baytril and the Genthro. Those are the 2 drugs of choice from gram negative bacteria, which is what this is. There is only one other kind that my vet knows about, and it is extremly expensive. By that I mean over $100 for a 7 day course. And not readily available on Vancouver Island.

[dave68]

i have a ten + year old male boa aquired as a rescue with the whole top of his snout from nostrils to eyeballs folded back from being kept in a chicken wire enclosure and trying to push his way through . to make matters worse the first person that tried to help him knew nothing about reptiles and just kept trying to feed him live jumbo rats acouple times a week and he obviously wasn't interested in food so the rats just kept chewing him up when i finally got him he was approximately six and a half feet long and weighed under eight pounds with the front of his face gone and rat bites from superficial nibbles to holes right down to his spine all of which were infected. i really didn't think he would pull through but i treated all of his wounds with a product called wound rx that i've not been able to find since,anyways it was a powder that i applied daily to all his wounds and within weeks he started to improve noticeably. i also included a massage down the length of him regularly after his back was healing up. about a month into treatment i started to offer him pre killed food starting with rats which he would come and smell and dart away from as fast as he could i tried all kinds of dead rodents to no avail then one day someone gave me some pidgeons which i put in his cage live and still no feeding response . so i tried some live rodents starting with mice and watching very carefully still no then i tried the craziest rodent of them all a live gebil that he pounced on in a second and now six years later he is still with us and eating pre killed rodents of any kind and also is the star breeder in my boa collection and his facial wound is all healed up minus his nostrils so he has to breath through his mouth which freaks a lot of people out due to the hissing he sometimes makes when taking a large breath so i'd say keep up the good work and don't worry about the food thing, when he feels better he will eat . my hefty went more than a year and a half without food of any kind. if you could find some Wound Rx i swear it's like a miracle drug that i've used on a lot of different wounds and it works every time. it was produced by mardel laboratories it's furazolidone, which is a broad spectrum chemotherapeutic powder marketed especially for mouth rot in reptiles for a pet store purchase i was amazed at the results. anyways if you can find some let me know as i am just about out. good luck

[AnniesMom]

I found furazolidone powder 100% on this website.

http://www.fishyfarmacy.com/products.html

However, it is for use in fish tanks. Mardel Labs doesn't list it on it's website and I couldn't find a contact link for them either.

It appears to have been marketed under the name of Furox Spray. It looks to be available from farm supply stores

[Linds]

Originally posted by AnniesMom

It appears to have been marketed under the name of Furox Spray. It looks to be available from farm supply stores

I was just gonna say it sounsd exactly like a product "Wonder Dust" we used to use on our horses :p I still have some somewhere in my basement, if it is the same stuff you're talking about, good to know :)

[AnniesMom]

I suspect that it is the same product. I have been Google-ing it all morning and come up with a number of different products that all have the same active ingredients.

[dave68]

yeah, I've not been able to find the specific Wound Rx anywhere since the bottle I have now. It is a yellowish powder and was sold specifically for reptiles, would love to get my hands on some more.

[AnniesMom]

I think that is probably the same stuff, except they had put it in an aerosol can. The sites all say that it is a yellow powder. The fish site sells it just as a powder form. Maybe I will see if any fish stores in Victoria carry it.

[Scales Zoo]

We just got back, and I will try to find out what kind of antibiotic was used on fang as a ball form.

Just a personal opinion about gram negative bacteria. There are different types, and for each type there are different antibiotics that will work better than others.

You can have a culture and sensitivity test done. I've got some swab kits here at home to take swabs myself if ever needed. The vet will then know what bacteria to treat, and what antibiotics to use.

Resistance to antibiotics is a scary thing, and it is important that the vet uses the right amount of the right stuff. Quite often not enough batryil (or other antibiotic) is prescribed - and this kind of thing is what leads to antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Ryan

[Lrptls]

that poor snake =( i hope jake gets better soon, good luck

[AnniesMom]

We were at the vet again on Monday(3days ago) and it looks to be healing. He is now on a topical ointment as well that containes furazolidone. He gets it once a day, at night, after I clean the abcess. Boy, he doesn't like me very much right now. He LOVES his Daddy though! My husband(who doesn't like snakes) is very attached to Jake, and after each treatment that I have to give, Jeremy takes Jake and gives him love and attention. I think that we have a new herp lover in the community, although he will never admit it. But wait, in a couple of years,I'm sure that he will own one of his own! :)

[Wizwise2000]

Rawleigh antiseptic salve might be something to ask your vet about. Anyone reading this might want to ask actually. While fishing I manage to get some deep gashes on my legs and arms, and this stuff works better than almost anything I've used, now I know I'm a human and not a reptile. So ask the vet about it, it might be something to look into.

Hope everything with Jake goes very well.

Best regards
Shane

[AnniesMom]

Thanks Shane. Jake and I are back at the vet on Saturday and here's hoping that all is healing well.