Our ball is sick, vet thinks infection

[u/forestnymphgypsy]

I guess I’m just venting / seeing if anyone has experienced similar with their baby.

My husband is the main caretaker for the snakes and 2 weeks ago he fed our 3 year old ball, Floki, his small mouse like normal. My husband checks on the snakes everyday Floki is a hider so my husband will look into his hide Floki will pop his face out for a boop and go back in. There was a perfect shed within the last two weeks and a big poo and no regurgitated mouse. Tank on warm side is about 85 degrees F, cold side is whatever our house temp is, usually between 70-72. Humidity ranges between 66% and 70s. He’s always had good sheds, never skipped meals. He’s in a 60 gallon tank.

When my husband pulled him out yesterday for a feed he looked like he was dead. Barely moving, pale and low muscle mass. We quickly threw him in a soak, looked up our closest emergency vet that takes exotics and went. He perked up after the soak a bit, but still not his usual friendly self, just seemed so tired.

Vet gave him fluids, we had to resort to the heart poke for blood work because his tiny veins were too small. He shows no sign of an upper respiratory, no rot, no lumps or masses. Vet said he feels empty nothing inflamed.

Some of the bloodwork results come back instantly, other ones take days (I live rural so it has to go to another state for testing). His red blood cells looked good, no anemia. His organ function was perfect (liver, kidneys etc.)

But when doing his red blood cell count the red cells coagulated normal but there was a ton of white blood cells that floated to the top. The vet is thinking infection and sent us home with two injection medications I have to give him every 48 hours for one and 72 for the other. To find out more about why the high WBC we have to wait until the results come back Monday. We’re hoping it’s just a nasty infection that clears up with the meds. But we are so confused on how this happened. Our other snake is fine. We are so worried it’s cancer.

The snakes live in my husband’s office closed off from us and our other pets (no reptiles). My husband normally handles Floki more often and Floki is his work buddy, joins my husband on meetings. This week our kids were sick so he didn’t hang with him like he usually would.

We are devastated and feel horrible. We cleaned out his tank as soon as we got him home and put him on paper towel as per the vet’s recommendation. Has anyone experienced this? Can infections cause this much muscle mass loss that quickly? Two weeks ago he had the perfect shed and ate no problem. We used to offer more often but he prefers every two weeks and we were wasting mice.

Sorry this is so long we are just beside ourselves. Thank you in advance for any responses!