DozerCooley
Active Member
Hi all! I am new to this forum as well as new to being a tortoise parent. We recently adopted a sulcata from our local pet store who randomly had an owner surrendered sulcata there looking for a new home. With very little knowledge and absolutely no experience with caring for a tortoise of any kind we opened our home to this little girl, who we named Dozer. We researched nonstop every sulcata tortoise fact, opinion and experience of other owners in order to try to give our girl the best life possible. We began to get suspicious that there might be something "off" with Dozer about two weeks into her coming to live with us. She constantly kept trying to pass gas/poop nonstop.
As this was the only symptom we noticed and she continued to have an extremely healthy appetite we deiced to give her a little time to see if it was just due to the fact that she was now living in a new place with possibly a different diet. Finally going on week 3 we decided we needed to be sure there wasn't something more going on with her and we took her in to the vet to get checked out. They immediately saw some light pinkish coloring on her plastron and thought this was a pretty good indication she was septic. They decided to keep her over night and do a full workup on her including a CT scan. We got the call the next day that the CT scan revealed a bladder stone that was so large it was taking up more than 1/3 of her entire insides. This was reeking havoc on her entire body as the stone was pushing all of her organs around and making it every difficult for her to have a bowel movement. She has no chance at survival without surgery to remove the stone. We have elected to proceed with the surgery and she will be having the procedure done this Thursday 1/10/19. During the surgery they will be cutting through her plastron, pulling out her bladder, removing the stone and then putting everything back together again. They will also be removing a decent size slice of her very back scute area as they believe this may be a part of the stone issue happening in the first place as they believe her back scute is deformed enough that it is holding her tail tight against her anus so that she can't really move her tail at all to poop. They believe both the deformed scute, the bladder stone and her slight pyramiding is all due to the previous owner not caring for her properly.
So with all that said we have a few questions: first has anyone had a sulcata or tortoise of any kind go through this surgery and are willing to give us some insight on what the expect during the recovery process - we've been told it will take around 12-18 months for it to fully heal. Second what can we do to make sure she doesn't ever get another bladder stone?
Thank you in advance and please keep Dozer in your thoughts this Thursday and throughout her recovery.
I will attach some photos of our girl as well as the CT scan of the enormous
bladder stone.
Thanks!
Ashley
As this was the only symptom we noticed and she continued to have an extremely healthy appetite we deiced to give her a little time to see if it was just due to the fact that she was now living in a new place with possibly a different diet. Finally going on week 3 we decided we needed to be sure there wasn't something more going on with her and we took her in to the vet to get checked out. They immediately saw some light pinkish coloring on her plastron and thought this was a pretty good indication she was septic. They decided to keep her over night and do a full workup on her including a CT scan. We got the call the next day that the CT scan revealed a bladder stone that was so large it was taking up more than 1/3 of her entire insides. This was reeking havoc on her entire body as the stone was pushing all of her organs around and making it every difficult for her to have a bowel movement. She has no chance at survival without surgery to remove the stone. We have elected to proceed with the surgery and she will be having the procedure done this Thursday 1/10/19. During the surgery they will be cutting through her plastron, pulling out her bladder, removing the stone and then putting everything back together again. They will also be removing a decent size slice of her very back scute area as they believe this may be a part of the stone issue happening in the first place as they believe her back scute is deformed enough that it is holding her tail tight against her anus so that she can't really move her tail at all to poop. They believe both the deformed scute, the bladder stone and her slight pyramiding is all due to the previous owner not caring for her properly.
So with all that said we have a few questions: first has anyone had a sulcata or tortoise of any kind go through this surgery and are willing to give us some insight on what the expect during the recovery process - we've been told it will take around 12-18 months for it to fully heal. Second what can we do to make sure she doesn't ever get another bladder stone?
Thank you in advance and please keep Dozer in your thoughts this Thursday and throughout her recovery.
I will attach some photos of our girl as well as the CT scan of the enormous
bladder stone.
Thanks!
Ashley
