I am continuing my special care routine with the leopard gecko. He’s doing incredible. He’s gained weight, his eyes are open, and he’s doing so much better. He’s fighting everything now, and I need to really work to get him to take his tiny medicine doses and his 1mL per day of food. It’s a huge hassle and I am proud of his progress, but also I am tired of battling with him for everything. Hopefully I will be able to stop the eye drops and medications after his follow up at the vet’s next week. Or maybe reduce it to one medication! He may not need the anti-inflammatory after all the healing he has done. I am sure she will need to ensure his eye and mouth infections are gone before we can stop the antibiotics and eye drops. I can’t tell if those are gone.
I have been wondering these last few days if he was always slightly underweight. Looking at him now, it seems like he’s not much smaller than he used to be. His tail still needs to fatten up a bit, but I don’t think that will be 15 or so more grams to get him to 60 grams. So I wonder if Boy #2 was wrong about feeding him every other day when he made that decision. I am thinking he may need to eat more often, especially since he may have been losing weight regularly over time these past few months. When I cleaned his home after the vet appointment, I found several dead meal worms, which would mean he did not eat them. How long did he refuse to eat? And did Boy #2 just not feed him for days on end? I am not sure, but I have many questions for the vet. I know we need to be careful to not feed him certain things every day. Meal worms can cause problems with impaction if fed on consecutive days, so we will need to figure things out for him. He wasn’t able to keep up with crickets, so that may be some of the problem this past year. Perhaps he will be able to catch up and eat crickets once he’s fully healthy. Maybe he’s been off for a lot longer than I even realize.
I need to write my questions down for the vet. I want to ensure we do the right thing going forward. He deserves better and I want him to really enjoy the rest of his life. This has been a really rough 8 days and I don’t want to repeat it at all. He’s got his fight back and he’s so much more spunky than he’s been for a long time. I love seeing his eyes open and looking good. He had them shut the day I took him to the vet and it’s taken a long time for me to get them open for him. I really, really hope that mean that the infection is gone or almost gone.
I just don’t want to let him die if there’s anything I can do to save him. I feel really comfortable with his regular care now, since I have done so much special care this past week. Sadly, I may have to give him back to Boy #2 once he’s done with college. Maybe he will ask for him back and maybe he won’t.
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