Turtles

One of the outstanding moments of our recent vacation for me was going to the Jekyll Island turtle center. It is a turtle hospital and they had approximately 6 to 7 patients when we were there. As we walked in the door, the lady that was taking tickets told us to hurry because they were doing an assessment on a new turtle that had just been brought in. So we hurried to the viewing window to watch the vet and the interns take care of this scraped up, cut up turtle. It's shell had been damaged and bleeding, although I am not sure how it happened. I didn't hear that part. I managed to get a couple of pictures as they attended to the wounds on the "carapace".






As we moved on to view some of the displays, one of the attendants told us that they were doing "rounds" in the hospital and would be talking about each patient, so we hurried into the next building where the rounds were in session. Each turtle is in a large tank, although we did see one tank with 2 turtles -they were separated by a barrier. I learned quite a bit about turtles from that session including some of the conditions that they are brought in with. A lot of them may be injured from boats or other animals. A larger number of them, however, are brought in with the debilitated turtle syndrome. Often they are found floating, because they have lost their ability to dive down, often because of air that is caught in their shell. Sometimes they are floating "crooked" and have barnacles or leeches on them .

This was our "intern"




I took a picture of one of the turtles, along with her information and am sharing it here with you. Her name is Erika and she has this floating syndrome. You may be able make out some of the diagnosis and treatmen plan in the following photo.

and here she is
After I got home from vacation, I went to the website to check to see how she was doing, but nothing was shown for her. I got pretty gutsy and emailed the vet to see why she wasn't on the web site. I received a reply back right away that they have been very busy and unable to update the patient portion of the web site. In addition he also updated me on Erika's condition and I thought I would share it. I was very impressed with the response and wanted to let everyone know what a wonderful and worthwhile venture this is. It is probably a tax deduction for donations, too (hint)

He wrote:
"Faye, We have been so busy, I just have not had time to update everyone. Erika is still floating. We did figure out that if we aspirate air to a certain level her tube feeding goes much better and she does not regurgitate. The air in her body cavity pushes on her GI tract and makes it difficult to pass the stomach tube. We are now able to increase the frequency and volume of her tube feeding and better able to meet her nutritional needs as her lung heals. I will try to get something up on her as soon as I can. Thanks so much for your interest. Terry Norton, DVM, Director and Veterinarian, GSTC "

A really weird coincidence is that I took a book along on vacation to read and it is about a sea turtle hospital. I think this may be my calling. Next step is a beach walk to check turtle nests. Wouldn't that be fun? By the way, the book is great - it is called Swimming Lessons, by Mary
Alice Monroe and is a sequel to the Beach House by Monroe. Unfortunately I couldn't get the first one, so I will be reading them out of order.

Check out the web site for the turtle center and watch for Erika. I hope he gets her on soon.