Hi all! Sorry about the delay, been busy and I wanted to take the time to respond properly. So we went to the Paralowie Veterinary Surgery and saw Dr. Delport Christo was absolutely amazing! For starters he was booked all day but said he would see Cherry as soon as we could get there, took about an hour drive
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And he gave me excellent advice which I wrote down,
Disclaimer: I would like to state that these comments reflect my personnel experiences and opinions in this particular case, not those of Dr. Christos and the Paralowie Veterinary Surgery.
So after examination:
Cherry could have either a fracture or a bite from her sisters. Since the enclosure is fairly safe we went with the bite from her dominant sister senario. What Roxy did was squeeze Cherry’s arm so firmly as to cause nerve damage L Because she is so little though he said that the bones wouldn’t have properly formed and her limbs would be mostly filled with cartilage (making an x-ray pointless) and so her leg had a better chance of recovering fully.
The recommendation was to of course separate her in to a smaller enclosure 1ft by .5ft which would limit her ability to run, provide easy climbs to the heat and UV lamps, and feed her baby crickets that had been refrigerated to slow their movement. As well as daily hydrotherapy baths J basically I use a teeny plastic container and give her warm baths carefully moving the arm in the water. And whenever I walk past her tank and see her sitting with the leg in an awkward position (generally stretched out behind her) I reach in and carefully move it forward.
Warning signs:
The problem with nerve damage is that it can either heal, or the nerve and affected tissue can die and spread L If this were to happen the limb would begin to turn black and the skin would harden beginning at the toes and working towards the body. If the affected area still has living, normal coloured skin then there is the chance the nerve and tissue death has been localised and while the arm will not be fully useable, it is not life threatening. But if the affected area is a solid black and the area is increasing towards the body the arm would need to be amputated.
Another problem is if, when biting Cherry, Roxy had broken the skin. This would cause an infection at the bite site which would be accompanied with swelling, puss and a purple discolouration. Because Cherry is so small her tiny kidneys would not be able to handle the antibiotics so while he didn’t say euthanize, twas the elephant in the room.
Thankfully in the last 3 days Cherry’s arm hasn’t shown any of the warning signs and the number of times a day I need to point her arm forward is reducing. Her movement is very much limited so when I walk past I tend to move her J if she’s been under the heat lamp a while, I move her to the UV and vice versa. When eating crickets she sort of lunges forward and face plants the floor, so while the arm is pointing the right direction, she’s obviously not using it much.
I need to keep a close watch until Saturday when she will hopefully be out of danger, and if any of the warning signs occur I need to contact Dr. Christo immediately and take her in for either amputation or...
So! There you go, I’ve typed this to keep for my own records in case this ever happens again and I hope other users of this site will find it useful.
I cannot recommend Dr. Christo and the nurses at Paralowie Veterinary Surgery highly enough, a very caring and professional practise that gave me faith I was putting Cherry into capable hands.
Thank so you very much!
p.s I've also known ppl to have melanomas on their reptiles from UV 10, if 5 will do the job, why risk it?
