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Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 1:15 pm Post subject: grim is impacted
my tegu grim is quite impacted with feces. she hasn't passed any for about 2 weeks, and has been straining quite hard with no results, so today i took her to the vets. she had an x-ray, which showed a lot of poop in there, and had an enema which got a little bit out but not much. good news is theres only poop in there, no foreign bodies.
the vet gave me a liquid laxative to give her called lactulose, which she took with surprising ease...but she is not really herself right now. hopefully that will help. i am soaking her in warm water for about 15-30 mins. a day (or as long as she'll put up with, she just flings herself out of the tub when she's had enough and i can't think of a way to keep her in there). is there anything else i could be doing to help? if she has not passed it all by monday she will need surgery, hopefully it won't come to that...
this was entirely my fault. i went on vacation last week, and since i was unable to find someone willing to feed her while i was gone i just fed her a lot before i left...far too much, apparantly.
How did she become impacted, without any foreign objects blocking her waste? _________________ " Never let them get to your pride, give them hell to the day you demise" -The Capo
Joined: May 30, 2006 Posts: 405 Location: STL, Missouri
Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject:
thats what i was wondering. i thought it was reallyhard to over feed a tegu to the point of impaction. how big is she? _________________ "To be great is to be misunderstood. . ."
she is passing urate every day, that is all that's coming out, so i don't think that is the cause of the blockage. she never normally passes urate daily but since she has become constipated it is everywhere, it is all that comes out when she strains (which is often). my apartment smells incredibly awful from her gas and urates, i'm seriously going to have to do something drastic when she is all cleaned out to get rid of this smell.
i believe it is fur, i fed her 3 rats before i left on vacation for a week. one was a bit too large, i always thought tegus would dismember food that was too large...but she choked it down whole. she seems like such a bottomless pit i though she'd be fine, but i think ingesting that much whole prey at once was too much for her system. it was complete stupidity on my part, i was in a rush to leave, couldn't find anyone willing to feed her while i was gone, so i just chucked those rats in.
the x-ray showed nothing but fecal matter and a lot of gas in there. she is even belching, which seems like a weird thing for a lizard to do...
anyway i'll keep you updated, wish her luck. i wont be able to forgive myself if i lose her from this
btw...she is about 40" long and 11 lbs...overweight, which isn't helping...
Joined: Nov 06, 2004 Posts: 972270 Location: Central Maine
Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 2:40 pm Post subject:
Two most common causes of impacting is 'fur' (from a mainly rodent diet) with no fruits to break it up. The other is when urates harden inside. This is generally from lack of clean water. This is likely the issue since you were gone for a week. The water bowl could have been flipped on the first day leaving the tegu with no water. Note that one large rodent will not cause an impaction.
Even though it is passing some urates, it could still be hard chunks of urates blocking it up. You could use a firm rubber tube and plastic syringe to squirt a little bit of warm mineral oil up there if it doesn't get better. Generally a few days of mineral oil will help.
I have personally had to do this once and it worked a charm.
I had problems with impaction with my tegu, too. He didn't poop for quite a few days, and also had intestinal prolapse. I could solve the problem with raising the basking temp. I simply put the bulbs closer to the basking surface. I use 120 F basking temps, and also much higher, wich he prefers. I don't have problems ever since, no matter how much substrates he eats, he can pass easily. Raising humidity and soaking also helped him.
she was in for another unsuccessful enema today, and we determined it is in fact hardened urate that is causing the problem. the guy i had looking after her while i was gone says he changed her water daily (he was fine with that, just not with feeding her) however he did not water and stir the substrate as i had asked. i'm now suspicious that he may have only changed the water once, on the day before i returned.
the vet did the tube/syringe thing with saline solution and ky jelly, she said she is not keen on using mineral oil. i'm not sure why, but i will inform her of your success with it, Rick.
if it has not cleared up by monday the vet wants to anethetize her so she can go up and work it out easily, without grim struggling and tensing up. i'd rather that NOT happen, due to both the cost and risks of anesthesia.
i would try the syringe/tube enema with mineral oil myself, but no one will help me restrain her. man it sucks not having any herp-keeping friends outside of the internet!! everyone i asked is just baffled as to why i'm making the effort "just for a lizard"
its nice how grim and i have "bonded" over the last few days, though. i moved into a new place 8 months ago, since then i am ashamed to say i hadn't been paying enough attention to her. since i got back from my trip i've been doting on her for hours a day, and i have to say it felt very good when all she wanted to do after the vet had finshed proping her was to crawl onto my lap and rest.
well since i live in canada and only have a cell phone, it would be too expensive to call...i need every cent for these vet bills! but please PM me with any advice!!
Joined: May 30, 2006 Posts: 405 Location: STL, Missouri
Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject:
when grim is trying to go, will she sit realy still and look like shes concentrating?
also can whole grapes cause impaction or can they digest the whole grape including the skin? _________________ "To be great is to be misunderstood. . ."
Sounds like what your tegu is suffering from is a urinary calculi, or otherwise commonly called a bladder stone. Going for a week with bad or non-existent water isn't likely to have caused it, although the meals beforehand and possible lack of water potentially aggrivated it. Caculi are more a sign of longterm disorders such as hypovitaminosis A, hypovitaminosis D, hypocalcemia, excesses of dietary proteins, excess oxalates (not likely from what you've described for diet), bacterial infections or "seeded" from undigested consumed materials such as fur. Dehydration is a common variable for calculi formation but one week of such is not going to be the cause, it results from chronic dehydration that routinely promotes precipitation of solutes from concentrated urine. If the obstruction is large enough, the only way it can be safely removed will be through cystotomy. If indeed your tegu has calculi, you will need to get the formation examined for its constituents and then reassess the tegu's diet and possibly husbandry.
wow this is getting scary. i really don't know what in my husbandry could have caused this, i do have trouble maintaining good humidity, but it has rarely dropped to unacceptable levels for very long, and its always 80-90% humidity inside her hide box. the last few months i have been having a hard time getting her to eat fruit, but its not like she has been on rodent-only diet for her whole life, i try to give as much variety as she'll take. she is only 2 years old.
could i have over-done it with calcium and vitamin powder when she was younger? i did used to give it every feeding. but for the last 10 months or so she has only been getting supplements with her meal once every other week.
tomorrow i am dropping her off at the vets early in the morning, and she will be worked on throughout the day. i'm going to boost her basking temps higher (currently about 110f) and cover most of the top of her cage with plastic to try and get humidity at 80-90% throughout the cage.
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