u/pancakesnprints

I’m just going to keep updating, I think it’s nice to share this experience as it was hard finding any real research or proper documents regarding reptiles and heart failure or to know what to expect and this community has helped me hold strong through the tough times to get this far! I found more people who had also had beardies with heart failure here than anywhere else on the internet

Trog (3yr female) was diagnosed back in July before her 3rd birthday. After she hit a year old we struggled with fluid in her belly, to which we discovered follicular stasis. We spayed her, recovery was tough, we sampled the fluid - no bacteria or infection yay hopefully just inflammation. 6 months later we note lethargy, not basking in her own, staying her hide but not brumating, and constipation. She still ate with great enthusiasm however. After months of bloodwork, ultrasounds, an x-ray, almost went for a biopsy surgery, we finally got an echo done with a cardiologist and discovered heart failure.

After being on a higher dose of Lasix (Trog weighs 600grams and receives .3ml of Furosemide/Lasix every 12 hours by mouth) for 3 months I can tell you so far we are doing great. No constipation, she basks in her own, and her activity levels are up. Her weight has come down a little and her belly seems less distended. She has never showed any signs of respiratory struggle thankfully as I believe I caught this very early.

She does unfortunately have some muscle spasms I’ve started to notice, she sees the vet next week and they may do some bloodwork to double check her electrolyte levels, they were fine after her first month but we have no idea how well she is handling the Lasix unless we regularly are checking her bloodwork. From what I’ve read she could be having some spasms due to low calcium as the Lasix is pulling the fluid off of her, everything she eats has calcium on it so hopefully the vet has some answers next week. Other than having the occasional slow day of hiding away once in a while we have made a ton of improvements and I really hope that this continues for a while.

I will continue to update here incase anyone else is struggling while in the same boat. It’s an incredibly tough battle but I hope Trog’s story gives some hope or comfort in knowing you are not alone

Trog was diagnosed with heart failure back in July, we have put her on a higher dose of Lasix and she has gotten her quality of life back. She will never fully recover, and eventually she will decline, but thankfully the Lasix is working wonders right now. We have no idea how long she has left on this planet but I promised her to let her go peacefully when the time comes but for now I get to spend some good days with my girl and I’m so happy so we celebrated her third birthday the other day, she got a tiny cake made from grub pie gel, some bee pollen and some special treats. 🥳❤️

When I tell you this has been so emotional, I mean it, I tear up writing this update and it’s not even a sad update. It is so so so happy. The second picture is her currently, sound asleep after getting her nighttime medicine after I got off of work.

If you have not been following any of my posts, my beardie Trog has been sick for over a year beginning at 1 1/2 years old. We discovered follicular stasis and fluid buildup in her belly, we spayed her and she spent a night in icu, but recovered, and 6 months later the fluid that we initially thought was inflammation from the stasis, increased big time. She became lethargic, constipated, and wasn’t basking on her own but continued to eat with enthusiasm. A lot more tests later and a cardiologist doing an echo, we discovered she had heart failure. We were not optimistic as we had tried Lasix before with no changes, but this time we were trying a much higher dose. Long term use we weren’t sure how she would handle it at this high of a dose or if it would do anything at all.

I am incredibly happy to say, Trog is doing amazing. She has no constipation, she basks on her own, her weight and fluid buildup are down, and she is climbing, and since the doc said it was okay to give her substrate again, she spent several hours running around the morning after I gave it to her just digging in every spot she could and mangling her new plants. We checked her bloodwork to check her electrolytes and kidney function too, and it was all fantastic.

I’m blown away you guys, I was planning her last days when she was first diagnosed and here we are. I understand many would have given up sooner, and I would not have blamed anyone. I am grateful and blessed that financially I was able to get this far with her, and that for her, the medicine is working to give her her quality of life back. I had initially planned for a week or so when she was first diagnosed, but now she turns 3 next week and I’m hopefully for maybe even a couple extra years.

Last week Trog was officially diagnosed with heart failure. I was devastated, she had been on Lasix and Pimoden prior to this and it never provided any relief so I was not very hopeful when they suggested a higher dose of Lasix after diagnosis. I decided to try anyways as I wanted to try and make her last days more comfortable. I started planning her last days, what things we would do, what bugs and special fruits and treats to give her. I was even looking to getting clay for her claw prints and a special urn. Deciding on what would be the signs for “okay this is the week”.

She started a higher dose of Lasix Friday, she was on .18 ml of 10mg per ml previously but stopped after a month with no relief. And then now she is on .3 ml, all PO. What an absolute turn of events. Her constipation stopped almost immediately, and her activity level has increased to levels I haven’t seen since winter. She started climbing again, basking more by choice, and when I checked the camera while I was at work she was eating her salad all by herself when normally she would only eat bugs. She even lost a little bit of weight, and her belly is less distended.

I still have my plan in place but hopefully this means I won’t have to go through with it for a while now. Heart disease isn’t well researched in reptiles, so this was all a scary process. But there were many posts in Reddit that helped me along the way and have given me some hope. Thank you to everyone who has posted their own journey with heart disease and also who have given us positive comments, it means the world to see my special little girl live comfortably again and hopefully for a while longer 🥹❤️

Added this cute lil video of her peaking into the camera yesterday 👀

Trog saw the cardiologist today and it’s official. Right sided heart failure. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent it, or cause it. We are putting her on a higher dose of lasix to see if we can manage the fluid in her belly and maybe improve her lethargy, and she will be reassessed in approx 1 month to see how it’s going.

It is irreversible, and will inevitably lead to a slow decline until her heart gives out. Instead of letting her get to that point, I am going to monitor her and when the time is right I will let her go on our terms, holding her claw every step of the way.

I am absolutely devastated and feel like someone shattered my soul. She was first reptile, and taking care of her was what kept me alive when my life fell apart 2 years ago. She is my soul dragon.

I have spent thousands on her trying to get an answer and fix her, and as much as I don’t regret any of it. I am just angry at the universe. She is asleep in my arms as I type this and I can hardly look at her without sobbing, I don’t want to let my little girl go. The end of this coming August marks 3 years since I brought her home as a baby, it is unlikely she will make it to 4.

I will update in a month after we have tried a new dose of lasix, I hope it makes her more comfortable and does something for her, I at least finally have a diagnosis which gives me some closure knowing I’ve done everything I can.

I only started playing for the first time in January and completed my first run through of the game by March, I needed my boyfriend and another summoned player to beat her the first go around, I was using the moonveil and felt so defeated without help. Consort Radahn took me literal weeks but I eventually managed to get him with just me and my mimic and the moonveil.
Just started my second run through about a month ago and playing in my free time and decided if I had the patience to get through Consort Radahn that I could get Malenia by myself as well and after several hours between two nights after work I finally got her. I’m actually excited to get to Consort Radahn this time!

This game has been so much and I wished I had played it far sooner. It has shown me how incredibly stubborn I actually am but changed a lot of my mindset. I have a lot more patience and also confidence in myself to not give up on some tasks that may seem impossible right away and to really try and problem solve before giving in.

So if you’ve followed along with Trog’s medical journey the last update I posted it felt like we were starting to lean towards palliative care. It felt like nothing was working and the vet was stumped. We had done ultrasound, bloodwork, fecal, we even took samples of the fluid in her abdomen to check for infection or bacteria. We trialed some heart medications, but nothing. Absolutely no answers.

Today I brought her in to have the fluid drained, just in hopes it may make her more comfortable while I try some Hail Marys. I started her on a broad spectrum antibiotic incase there was an infection we had missed, and then my next options were an echo with the cardiologist or a biopsy surgery. I decided against the biopsy surgery as it seemed like too much to put her through, she was spayed last year and the sedation was hard on her and she spent a night in icu. There was also the option of a CT scan but that was very expensive as she’s had one before being spayed and I’m not kidding when I say I’ve spent probably over 10k between her issues, Gronk also being spayed, and rescuing Pogue (my other two beardies).

While she was there today I randomly thought let’s do an x-ray, it doesn’t require sedation, and gives us a full body look at her inside structure. They pulled off 10ml’s of fluid, and everything else came back normal except the vet believes her heart looks mildly enlarged and rounded from the x-ray. Thankfully I had saved a spot with the cardiologist who is visiting their clinic in July so we decided to do the echo then which also will not require any sedation.

I was really starting to lose all hope that I would have an answer and just have to face the palliative route with no clear disease process to understand, but now we just might get an answer. And If it is cardiac then maybe the cardiologist will be able to help. So keep your fingers crossed, maybe just maybe we may have an answer, and by some miracle it’s a treatable condition then I’ll throw every penny at this to make her feel better. If it’s not I will accept it with grace knowing I did everything I could and palliate her and make her as comfortable as possible for what time we have left.

We had our follow up appointment after 1 month of being on Pimobendan, Furosemide, and a liver supplement. We decided to stop the liver supplement as I was told it won’t make or break anything right now, and we upped her dose of Furosemide as she still has a little fluid on her belly.
One big improvement is no constipation, and she’s no longer needed to be stimulated or probed to get her bowels moving.

Otherwise we don’t have any other answers, she still isn’t super sick or showing any signs of pain, the fluid isn’t backing up onto her lungs, she’s not black bearding, she just isn’t thriving. We’ve decided to keep her on the cardiac meds a little longer, and re evaluate in a few weeks. I’ve been approved to give her substrate again so I’m going to give her some plants and substrate and hope that also maybe more enrichment will cheer her up.

As much as I’d love more definitive answers, a CT of the heart may not give us any answer and is quite costly here where I am in Canada, and the option of a biopsy of her liver is costly and when she was intubated for her spay a little over a year ago she didn’t handle it well and spent a night in the ICU so we are on the fence of any full sedation procedures at the moment. We aren’t even too sure if it’s cardiac, so we are basically trying things little by little and hoping for improvement. There just isn’t much to go off of in CHF in beardies so my vet is being very cautious and we’re keeping a close eye on her. She still eats bugs, refusing greens, and hides away a lot, but the no more constipation is at least one win on the books for her. She gets a couple hornworms spread out each week to keep her hydration up while being on fluid medication so she’s happy about those at least.

Keep your fingers crossed for us and I’ll update again in a few weeks when hopefully I’ll have some good news or an answer as to what’s going on with my sweet girl 🩷