LostTogether
New member
So, just about a month ago, I took my gecko to the vet and he was diagnosed with gout. I have written down an almost day-by-day update to see if anything has changed, and here they are:
May 7th: So, I took my five year old male leo to the vet late this afternoon due to the fact I noticed some pretty bad swelling in his left back leg. Turns out he has arthritis and gout. Since there's nothing you can really do about either of them, all I can do at the moment is give him painkillers. I believe the gout has spread to his right front foot, since there is slight inflammation beginning to show up on it, though not as bad as the inflamed leg of his.
A few days ago, before I noticed how bad the swelling had gotten, his foot was barely inflamed at all. Just a little puffiness, but I thought it'd be gone within a week or so. Turns out it got much worse than I expected. Right now, the leg is really puffy and there is a red lump protruding from the starting of his foot.
He isn't as active as he was before in his tank. I noticed while he walked, he just about drags the gout leg, barely moving it at all. He can't really lift himself well, so he slightly drags his whole body along. I also noticed that all he does is sleep under his log most of the day, in the corner of the tank. There is a female sharing the tank with him and she always lays next to him to keep him company. I wonder, can she sense that he is sick?
I picked him up earlier and it seems that his belly feels a bit tender/squishy. Is that from a vitamin/calcium deficiency? I tried feeding him earlier and I sprinkled some calcium powder on his wax worms, but all he did was lick the worms. It makes me more nervous knowing that he has stopped eating also. Sticking the worm in front of him doesn't work either.
Since I noticed the inflammation, I've been soaking him for about 20 minutes each day in warm water, and putting triple antibiotic on his feet and legs. Is there anything else I can do to help keep him comfortable and still alive? I've been trying my hardest the past few days doing what I can.
Additional information:
· How long have you owned the animal? 4-5 years. He's 5 years and 3 months old.
· What is the enclosure size? To be honest, I can't remember the exact gallons it holds, but it's definitely enough room for both geckos.
· What type of substrate are you using (shavings, bark, paper towel, etc.)? At the moment, I am using paper towels for the time being over the carpet I typically use because I need to clean the tank soon, since there's dead worms and poop all over. I didn't want his leg to get more infected, so I placed the paper towels on top of all of it.
· What type of lighting are you using and at what distance(s) are they from the animal? (UVB and Basking) I use both a UVB, white basking light (75w), and a red basking light. I keep the UVB light on constantly since I have a little pile of calcium powder sitting in the tank. The white basking light I use during the day, and since the red basking light has a lower wattage, I use that during the night since it's more dimmer also.
· What are the temperatures within the enclosure and how are they being measured? I have to say it's around 80-90F. I used to have a stick on thermometer, but it didn't exactly work as I thought it would.
· What is the humidity within the enclosure and how is it being measured? I spray fresh water upon the log on the left side of the tank once a day. I have a water dish filled with fresh water in the middle of the tank.
· What are you feeding (or attempting to feed) the animal? Wax worms and sometimes crickets. They don't like anything else to be honest.
May 8th: Yesterday, I cleaned their tank. The male walked around the tank for at least 10-15 minutes before settling down under the log. He rattled his tail a bit, so I assumed he was hungry. I set a few wax worms in front of him with Zoomed calcium powder on them. Since he has trouble eating (can't catch worms quite well; doesn't open his mouth quite enough to fully get the worm in his mouth), I kept pushing the worms in front of his mouth, and he was able to eat two of the worms. I could tell he wanted to hunt them because he was looking at the worms with his hunting eyes. He also licked up some of the powder I had put next to his water dish.
Today: He's been sleeping all day from what I've noticed. He occasionally moves around his tank to sleep somewhere else. For the past couple hours, he's been sleeping in the middle of the tank, not under the log or rock I have in the tank. Earlier he did go under the rock, but less than 5 minutes later he left for the middle of the tank. I opened the tank to make sure he was okay, but it seems that his left eye can't open. He opened his right eye, though. In about an hour, I have it scheduled for a warm soak, and to give him his painkillers and to put some ointment on his feet.
5-16-14 update: Today I was in a rush to soak him since my sister had to go to an appointment soon after I got home from school. I had to come with her, so there was no way for me to possibly avoid going. I only got to soak him for about 5 minutes, then I did the usual: gave him his medicine and put ointment on his bad feet. I also fed him tonight and he ate 6 decent (but kinda small) wax worms. He had a real good appetite. I didn't have to poke him in his nose constantly for him to take it from me. It only took one or two times then he snatched it right out of my fingers. I've been noticing that for about a week or a little longer, there have been tiny poops around the tank, but it might be from the female since she doesn't really eat much. Even though the male has eaten a bunch this past week, it doesn't look like he's gained any weight at all. He still looks like he has a decent weight though. Also, his left eye is still closed. He opens it once in a while, but for the majority of the time, he keeps it shut, and I'm not sure why. He only opens it if he's trying to get out of my hands, or out of his soaking container. When he does open his eye, it looks a bit dull and darker than his right eye, and it's watery too. When I soak him, I tried to dab water on it to see if there was something in his eye that I could rinse out, but that wasn't the case because it didn't improve.
5-17-14 update: He pooped today, although it doesn't really look like a normal one to me. In the middle of the poop was an undigested looking wax worm, body and all. The brown of the poop looked porous, with tiny holes in it. And the white part of it looked very small. Just a tiny sliver. His left eye is still closed. What shocked me most was that I found two splotches of blood in the tank, right next to each other. They were there recently because I didn't see them there two hours earlier. Before I soaked him, I checked everywhere to see if he had any dried blood on him, but there wasn't any that I saw.
5-20-14 update: Two more splotches of blood on the other side of the tank. I still can't really find the source of it. The bump on his hind leg doesn't look red anymore, but a pinkish-white. I can see little red blood vessels(?) through the bump's skin. His right front foot hasn't really changed much, it's still its normal purple shade, even though his scales on that foot are spread out due to the inflammation. The most swollen toe on that foot has black crusty stuff on the middle of it. Two other toes by the nail are black and crusty also. I'm guessing it may be dried up blood. His left eye is still closed. The toes that have the gout in them on the right front foot are beginning to turn white. I dunno if that's a bad or good sign...
5-21-14 update: Today, he seems a bit worse. He's more in pain than usual. Every time I try putting ointment on his feet, no matter how lightly I touch him, he winces and flinches, shaking that food really bad. I'm starting to wonder, does his medicine really work? His left eye is still closed, but with a bit of research, I think I came up with a solution on how to fix it. I'll see if we can get some vitamin A stuff to see if that'll work on his eye.
5-22-14 update: The gout has gone into his left back thigh. You can tell that thigh is bigger than the other one, but inside it doesn't feel hard/firm. He's more sleepy and limp and im starting to worry about him even more. While I was soaking him, he slowly started to close his eyes and he fell asleep in the water. I feel like he's slowly dying on me... there has been no sign of improvement. Since the beginning. Another thing, while I was soaking him, he kept his nose completely under the water for a few seconds before I fetched him out so he wouldn't drown. He doesn't even try to run away when he's in mg hands like he usually would. He just sits/lays there in my hand. He always feels a bit limp and doesn't move much when I pick him up. And I did notice: his medicine is for pain, but it DOESN'T work. He's obviously in noticeable pain still. I'm guessing the end may be near.
5-26-14 update: He hasn't eaten in the past 2 or 3 feeding days. I'm really starting to worry about him. I've been left to just force feed him because he doesn't go after food, or is too slow to go after the worm, and doesn't put full effort into the bite. Every time he gets a worm into his mouth, he gets of halfway into his mouth, then spits it right back up. I don't know why he's doing this... I usually take him out of the cage to feed, but when I put him back into the cage, it looked like he wanted to hunt, but he didn't attempt to bite after one. I wiggled a tiny wax worm under his lower jaw and it took him a while before he ate that one. I had the calcium powder on all of the worms, and before it increased his appetite, but now it doesn't work. I know force feeding gives them stress, but its about the only way he'll eat..
5-29-14 update: Yesterday, I gave him Flukers liquid vitamin to see if it'll help him at all with anything. He's still mostly sleeping throughout the day in the corner of the tank, partially under the log. This morning, I noticed two poops in the tank next to each other. I knew one was from the male, and one was from the female. I guessed the one with no brown in it was the male's since he hasn't eaten almost all this week. The urates in it looks normal. But the odd part is, attached to the urates is a thin yellow wavy piece, with a green kinda paste on it.
6-5-14 update (Today): I gave him his medicine earlier and put some ointment on his eye that the vet gave me a while ago for a different gecko. Both his eyes are now closed, and have been for almost a week now. He barely opens either of them.
He hasn't eaten any worms in over a week now. He barely even licks up his medicine when I put it on his nose every afternoon. He won't even lick up the water I put on his nose either. He's starting to scrunch up his head more often, and squeeze his eyes tighter shut. He's lying flat in his cage now, and barely moves around. I can feel how empty his stomach is every time I pick him up. When I take him out of the cage in the afternoon, he always walks around a bit after I soak him, but that's about it. He usually just lays down after that. His eyes are more sunken in also. His tail looks only a bit thinner than it did a month ago. I have been taking a few pictures every now and then to see if I notice a difference at all.
Since he has gotten much worse since the beginning, it means he's dying, right? Please someone tell me what's going on. I got nothing about of the last site I posted in and waited for in the last month, and I don't want to wait for an answer any time sooner.. It's getting too late for waiting; I have no time for it. It's getting extremely urgent.
May 7th: So, I took my five year old male leo to the vet late this afternoon due to the fact I noticed some pretty bad swelling in his left back leg. Turns out he has arthritis and gout. Since there's nothing you can really do about either of them, all I can do at the moment is give him painkillers. I believe the gout has spread to his right front foot, since there is slight inflammation beginning to show up on it, though not as bad as the inflamed leg of his.
A few days ago, before I noticed how bad the swelling had gotten, his foot was barely inflamed at all. Just a little puffiness, but I thought it'd be gone within a week or so. Turns out it got much worse than I expected. Right now, the leg is really puffy and there is a red lump protruding from the starting of his foot.
He isn't as active as he was before in his tank. I noticed while he walked, he just about drags the gout leg, barely moving it at all. He can't really lift himself well, so he slightly drags his whole body along. I also noticed that all he does is sleep under his log most of the day, in the corner of the tank. There is a female sharing the tank with him and she always lays next to him to keep him company. I wonder, can she sense that he is sick?
I picked him up earlier and it seems that his belly feels a bit tender/squishy. Is that from a vitamin/calcium deficiency? I tried feeding him earlier and I sprinkled some calcium powder on his wax worms, but all he did was lick the worms. It makes me more nervous knowing that he has stopped eating also. Sticking the worm in front of him doesn't work either.
Since I noticed the inflammation, I've been soaking him for about 20 minutes each day in warm water, and putting triple antibiotic on his feet and legs. Is there anything else I can do to help keep him comfortable and still alive? I've been trying my hardest the past few days doing what I can.
Additional information:
· How long have you owned the animal? 4-5 years. He's 5 years and 3 months old.
· What is the enclosure size? To be honest, I can't remember the exact gallons it holds, but it's definitely enough room for both geckos.
· What type of substrate are you using (shavings, bark, paper towel, etc.)? At the moment, I am using paper towels for the time being over the carpet I typically use because I need to clean the tank soon, since there's dead worms and poop all over. I didn't want his leg to get more infected, so I placed the paper towels on top of all of it.
· What type of lighting are you using and at what distance(s) are they from the animal? (UVB and Basking) I use both a UVB, white basking light (75w), and a red basking light. I keep the UVB light on constantly since I have a little pile of calcium powder sitting in the tank. The white basking light I use during the day, and since the red basking light has a lower wattage, I use that during the night since it's more dimmer also.
· What are the temperatures within the enclosure and how are they being measured? I have to say it's around 80-90F. I used to have a stick on thermometer, but it didn't exactly work as I thought it would.
· What is the humidity within the enclosure and how is it being measured? I spray fresh water upon the log on the left side of the tank once a day. I have a water dish filled with fresh water in the middle of the tank.
· What are you feeding (or attempting to feed) the animal? Wax worms and sometimes crickets. They don't like anything else to be honest.
May 8th: Yesterday, I cleaned their tank. The male walked around the tank for at least 10-15 minutes before settling down under the log. He rattled his tail a bit, so I assumed he was hungry. I set a few wax worms in front of him with Zoomed calcium powder on them. Since he has trouble eating (can't catch worms quite well; doesn't open his mouth quite enough to fully get the worm in his mouth), I kept pushing the worms in front of his mouth, and he was able to eat two of the worms. I could tell he wanted to hunt them because he was looking at the worms with his hunting eyes. He also licked up some of the powder I had put next to his water dish.
Today: He's been sleeping all day from what I've noticed. He occasionally moves around his tank to sleep somewhere else. For the past couple hours, he's been sleeping in the middle of the tank, not under the log or rock I have in the tank. Earlier he did go under the rock, but less than 5 minutes later he left for the middle of the tank. I opened the tank to make sure he was okay, but it seems that his left eye can't open. He opened his right eye, though. In about an hour, I have it scheduled for a warm soak, and to give him his painkillers and to put some ointment on his feet.
5-16-14 update: Today I was in a rush to soak him since my sister had to go to an appointment soon after I got home from school. I had to come with her, so there was no way for me to possibly avoid going. I only got to soak him for about 5 minutes, then I did the usual: gave him his medicine and put ointment on his bad feet. I also fed him tonight and he ate 6 decent (but kinda small) wax worms. He had a real good appetite. I didn't have to poke him in his nose constantly for him to take it from me. It only took one or two times then he snatched it right out of my fingers. I've been noticing that for about a week or a little longer, there have been tiny poops around the tank, but it might be from the female since she doesn't really eat much. Even though the male has eaten a bunch this past week, it doesn't look like he's gained any weight at all. He still looks like he has a decent weight though. Also, his left eye is still closed. He opens it once in a while, but for the majority of the time, he keeps it shut, and I'm not sure why. He only opens it if he's trying to get out of my hands, or out of his soaking container. When he does open his eye, it looks a bit dull and darker than his right eye, and it's watery too. When I soak him, I tried to dab water on it to see if there was something in his eye that I could rinse out, but that wasn't the case because it didn't improve.
5-17-14 update: He pooped today, although it doesn't really look like a normal one to me. In the middle of the poop was an undigested looking wax worm, body and all. The brown of the poop looked porous, with tiny holes in it. And the white part of it looked very small. Just a tiny sliver. His left eye is still closed. What shocked me most was that I found two splotches of blood in the tank, right next to each other. They were there recently because I didn't see them there two hours earlier. Before I soaked him, I checked everywhere to see if he had any dried blood on him, but there wasn't any that I saw.
5-20-14 update: Two more splotches of blood on the other side of the tank. I still can't really find the source of it. The bump on his hind leg doesn't look red anymore, but a pinkish-white. I can see little red blood vessels(?) through the bump's skin. His right front foot hasn't really changed much, it's still its normal purple shade, even though his scales on that foot are spread out due to the inflammation. The most swollen toe on that foot has black crusty stuff on the middle of it. Two other toes by the nail are black and crusty also. I'm guessing it may be dried up blood. His left eye is still closed. The toes that have the gout in them on the right front foot are beginning to turn white. I dunno if that's a bad or good sign...
5-21-14 update: Today, he seems a bit worse. He's more in pain than usual. Every time I try putting ointment on his feet, no matter how lightly I touch him, he winces and flinches, shaking that food really bad. I'm starting to wonder, does his medicine really work? His left eye is still closed, but with a bit of research, I think I came up with a solution on how to fix it. I'll see if we can get some vitamin A stuff to see if that'll work on his eye.
5-22-14 update: The gout has gone into his left back thigh. You can tell that thigh is bigger than the other one, but inside it doesn't feel hard/firm. He's more sleepy and limp and im starting to worry about him even more. While I was soaking him, he slowly started to close his eyes and he fell asleep in the water. I feel like he's slowly dying on me... there has been no sign of improvement. Since the beginning. Another thing, while I was soaking him, he kept his nose completely under the water for a few seconds before I fetched him out so he wouldn't drown. He doesn't even try to run away when he's in mg hands like he usually would. He just sits/lays there in my hand. He always feels a bit limp and doesn't move much when I pick him up. And I did notice: his medicine is for pain, but it DOESN'T work. He's obviously in noticeable pain still. I'm guessing the end may be near.
5-26-14 update: He hasn't eaten in the past 2 or 3 feeding days. I'm really starting to worry about him. I've been left to just force feed him because he doesn't go after food, or is too slow to go after the worm, and doesn't put full effort into the bite. Every time he gets a worm into his mouth, he gets of halfway into his mouth, then spits it right back up. I don't know why he's doing this... I usually take him out of the cage to feed, but when I put him back into the cage, it looked like he wanted to hunt, but he didn't attempt to bite after one. I wiggled a tiny wax worm under his lower jaw and it took him a while before he ate that one. I had the calcium powder on all of the worms, and before it increased his appetite, but now it doesn't work. I know force feeding gives them stress, but its about the only way he'll eat..
5-29-14 update: Yesterday, I gave him Flukers liquid vitamin to see if it'll help him at all with anything. He's still mostly sleeping throughout the day in the corner of the tank, partially under the log. This morning, I noticed two poops in the tank next to each other. I knew one was from the male, and one was from the female. I guessed the one with no brown in it was the male's since he hasn't eaten almost all this week. The urates in it looks normal. But the odd part is, attached to the urates is a thin yellow wavy piece, with a green kinda paste on it.
6-5-14 update (Today): I gave him his medicine earlier and put some ointment on his eye that the vet gave me a while ago for a different gecko. Both his eyes are now closed, and have been for almost a week now. He barely opens either of them.
He hasn't eaten any worms in over a week now. He barely even licks up his medicine when I put it on his nose every afternoon. He won't even lick up the water I put on his nose either. He's starting to scrunch up his head more often, and squeeze his eyes tighter shut. He's lying flat in his cage now, and barely moves around. I can feel how empty his stomach is every time I pick him up. When I take him out of the cage in the afternoon, he always walks around a bit after I soak him, but that's about it. He usually just lays down after that. His eyes are more sunken in also. His tail looks only a bit thinner than it did a month ago. I have been taking a few pictures every now and then to see if I notice a difference at all.
Since he has gotten much worse since the beginning, it means he's dying, right? Please someone tell me what's going on. I got nothing about of the last site I posted in and waited for in the last month, and I don't want to wait for an answer any time sooner.. It's getting too late for waiting; I have no time for it. It's getting extremely urgent.
