Well, its been around year since my last RI scare with my 16 year old Boa.
Today while checking on her and getting her water changed I noticed she was gargling and wheezing as I lifted her upper body up as well as some mouth and nose gunk.
I have a vet appointment scheduled for her that I’m currently on my way to, to get some antibiotics (injection) and a lookover for her.
The thing I’m wondering about is if RI is more common in older snakes, as I have not had any RI issues with her in the past. In fact she is the only snake I’ve ever had RI issues with and it didn’t become a prevalent thing until these past few years, 3 years ago to be more accurate.
She is housed in a 6x2x2 pvc board enclosure, her temps stay at 86°F on the hot end and 75 on the cool end. Her humidity is a bit harder to manage because of the enclosure’s material but it typically stays around 60-65%.
She ate last night without issue, she most likely had the symptoms sooner than I had noticed so I’m glad I caught it today before it could get worse, I will be treating the mouth and nose gunk with betadine and I did a thorough cleanout of her enclosure with F10 before leaving for the vet.
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Update, she got 2 injections of antibiotics.
There was a substitute Vet standing in for her regular vet that didn’t really seem to be too knowledgeable in reptiles unfortunately, she told me that my Boa needed 100% humidity until the infection clears up… I don’t think I’ll be following through with that one.
The vet wants to give the antibiotics around 5 days and see how it goes from there, if symptoms dont improve or worsen Diamond will be going back, or possibly to a different vet until Diamond’s regular vet returns.
Vet thinks that Diamond is fine otherwise, I’ll continue to keep an eye on her.
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I’m glad you got her checked out so quickly 
I had a scare with my 25 year old maybe 7 years ago now… He was lethargic and had a shockingly red belly so I was concerned for septicemia. In hindsight he may have been having a rough shedding cycle, but we put him on antibiotics just in case and he’s never been nearly so red in a cycle again since. He’s been a super healthy big boy (aside from a begnin mass we’re monitoring now)
My only other issues so far has been 2 very young snakes. A 6 month old that just passed out of the blue with no clear reasons on his autopsy. And a 4 year old with what looked like an autoimmune issue that lead to sudden necrotizing colitis.
That’s not to say that issues wouldn’t be more common in older snakes as they would possibly become more immunocompromised with age. I think that once we have their care dialed in it’s usually pretty smooth sailing though. So changing my boy from his screen top terrarium to a tub and being able to keep his parameters even more consistent seem to fix my issues. Little things that shift that care like seasonal temp changes and humidity might be tougher on the older ones. Maybe that’s some of the issue here?
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This is what I’m thinking, we are entering our stormy season and we just recently got a lot of rain so the humidity has shot up quite a bit after not having any rain for a few weeks. It was also around the same time I had my last RI scare with her last year so weather changes definitely might be a contributor.
Thankfully all else seems fine and she ate for me Wednesday night, yesterday was quite a bit for her but she did really well at the vet despite giving me some understandable attitude while transporting her. Today I’m just watching her and giving her some space, her breathing showed some improvement yesterday evening.
We might be considering some enclosure changes after she fully recovers, outside of the high humidity from all the rain we’ve been getting it can be challenging to manage the humidity in her current enclosure.
All of my other snakes are fine as well so I’m not suspecting anything transmissible, but I’m being cautious just in case.
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Update:
Diamond is doing much better 
I gave her a few days to rest and kept an eye on her from a distance, her breathing has improved dramatically but she does still have a little bit of a wheeze.
Her mouth swelling is gone as well, no sign of mouth rot or anything else nasty. She does still have a bit of extra saliva production but that has gone down too.
She is going through a shed cycle which I already expected anyway, going to see how she’s doing after the shed cycle is over and if theres still no further improvement I’ll be getting her back to the vet to see if more antibiotics are needed. The wheezing noise sounds mostly like its coming from one of her nostrils thats a little bit crusty, its been cleaned with a damp q-tip and then treated with some diluted betadine, hoping that it clears up with a good shed.
The day after she got back from the vet while I was cleaning her mouth with a q-tip and doing betadine treatment I got a loose tooth from her mouth, just thought it was pretty neat since I’ve never gotten one before 
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So glad to hear that Diamond is improving. Wishing her a speedy recovery!
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