Sunday, October 19, 2003
Turtle Physical Therapy
Our wildlife medical volunteer team has been taking care of "Pyxis," the Red-Eared Slider, for a couple months now. She's been getting daily antibiotic injections in her leg muscles and antiseptic baths to ward off infection from the opening in her shell that exposes her coelomic cavity (her insides). After weeks and weeks of this, Pixie has gone from timid and hiding in her shell to sticking her head out and hissing and biting while we giver her injections. When we put her in her bath, she used to hold herself in her shell, but now she wiggles her stong, thick legs in a futile attempt to swim away. She's definitely developed some spunk.
Being cooped up in a small 1'x2' aquarium, Pixie doesn't get much fresh air. In addition, the intramuscular injections cause muscle soreness, and likely muscle bruising. Taking all this into account, along with her increased spunkiess, a few of my teammates figured that Pixie could benefit from some daily physical therapy.
At lunch time, she gets the freedom to walk around the vet school yard. She traveled 35 feet over Wednesday's lunch hour, and over 40 feet on Friday.
When she's out for her walks, Pyxie draws lots of attention. People out walking "ooh" and "ahh" at the adorable turtle. The blood donor dogs on
their lunchtime walks try to run toward the walking frisbee (fortunately the dogs are leashed).
When Pyxie knows I'm nearby, she withdraws into her shell:
"Is the coast clear?"
When I leave her alone and she thinks I'm nowhere around, she runs for her life:
She also like to explore:
But sadly, at the end of the hour, I have to go back to class, and Pyxie has to go back into her little aquarium.
Hopefully she'll be better in a few more months and we'll be able to release her come spring, but there is no way to tell yet whether her damaged shell is healing. If it's not, it's becoming necrotic (dead), and we may as well euthanize her.
In another month or so, Dr. Whittington will drill a little into the suspect area of the shell to see if it bleeds. If it does, that means the shell is growing and healing. If it doesn't bleed. . . we'll have to say goodbye to our little buddy.
Hang in there, Pyxie buddy.
