Turtle Tales

Frankie lives in an aquarium that is warm and comfortable. The floor of her home was covered with gravel to give it a more natural appearance.  She was supposed to walk on the gravel, but .......... Frankie decided the little round pieces of rock might taste good. They didn't, and soon she was sick!

Frankie's family brought her to see us at Emerson Animal Hospital.  They wanted us to tell them why she no longer felt good.  She had stopped eating normally, and his digestive system would not work properly.

I examined Frankie and decided we needed to do x-rays to see if she might have a tumor in one of her internal organs or eggs in her reproductive tract.  We were surprised, of course, because the problems we suspected were certainly not the problem we discovered.  This case shows that veterinarians often have to do tests or x-rays to actually determine what is making an animal ill.  Frankie has a severely impacted digestive tract, full of the small pieces of gravel that covered the floor of her aquarium.  This was extremely dangerous for her, because her intestines were blocked, and she could not use the bathroom as she should.  That could easily kill her.

Frankie was treated with a special drug that stimulates her digestive tract.  Even with the best drugs, removing all of the gravel, the small white objects seen above in Frankie's x-ray, is often impossible.  With so much abnormal material in the intestines, often the system will not work correctly again.

Frankie was treated for several days at home, and then she was treated for a longer time at our hospital while her family was out of town.  While here, we would often see her resting on her basking rock beneath the lamp that kept her warm.  For days, we could not tell if the treatment was helping her.  Then, another x-ray was taken to check for changes; had the medicine helped, and would Frankie recover?

When the film was developed and placed on the viewer for all of us to see, we saw that most of the gravel had passed out of Frankie's body, and she was much healthier. She was going to live!

The moral to the story, though, is, if you are a turtle, do not eat gravel if your owner puts it on the floor of your aquarium, ! If you do, you will get sick and have to go to the veterinarian.