Post by Kryss on Jun 2, 2007 14:59:10 GMT -7
As some of you may know, I've spent a large portion of my week trying desperately to save a premature baby leopard gecko that had a rather nasty hernia. She had left the egg too soon Wednesday morning, and had torn off her yolk sack before she had finished absorbing it. Worse still, she had caught her umbilical cord on something and essentially "gutted" herself, resulting in a hernia where the tissue was coming out. She had hatched at my friend Mila's house, but she had to work until 5:30, at which time it just wouldn't have been possible to get the baby to any of the very few vets in the city that actually know how to treat exotics like this, never mind would agree to treat such a young one. I called the same vet I had taken Glyph (my leopard gecko who broke two of her legs back in April) to, and he said that if I didn't have her there in a matter of hours, she ran a high chance of mortality. So I did the only thing I could - called Mila up, bussed off to her work, got the keys to her place, picked up the baby, and bussed out to the Sidney Animal Hospital to bring her to Dr. Noorlander. I had to keep checking she was breathing the entire way there. I named her Akkina (after a character in a novel I am very fond of), because I don't think there truly is anything worse than dying alone and nameless. Even if she didn't make it, I wanted her to know love and kindness, so she could at least leave this world with something other than the terrible pain I knew she was in. He put her under anesthesia, determined that the tissue hanging out was indeed abdominal fat, and not a loop of intestine (which would have been almost guaranteed fatal), put everything back in, and put in a single stitch with the tiniest needle they had in the clinic. He says if she lives the weekend, she should be okay. I want to put a big thank-you out to all those vets who have ever helped in such dire circumstances. I don't think many would even have tried to do what Dr. Noorlander did, to put such a tiny, fragile creature successfully under anesthesia. She weighed in at two grams, and is a little over an inch long - imagine the care and skill that must have taken. I was so happy that she had a chance to live that I cried tears of happiness on the way home - something I'd never truly understood possible until that very moment. So please, send your thoughts, wishes, prayers, etc. her way - she could definitely make use of them...After all, a life is a life, whether we be a gecko, an plant, or a person - and I believe that each and every life should be entitled to as much love, prosperity, and happiness as we each hope to enjoy.
She's going into shed today, and she could either shed fine, and start eating (baby leopard geckos only begin to eat after their first shed following hatching), which she desperately needs, having not absorbed her yolk sack. Or, she could tear out her stitch and have her guts come out again. And since the vet that treated her has left town, and that that clinic is closed until Monday regardless, I don't know what I will do if this shed goes wrong...
She's going into shed today, and she could either shed fine, and start eating (baby leopard geckos only begin to eat after their first shed following hatching), which she desperately needs, having not absorbed her yolk sack. Or, she could tear out her stitch and have her guts come out again. And since the vet that treated her has left town, and that that clinic is closed until Monday regardless, I don't know what I will do if this shed goes wrong...
