Near Death Experience, help!

Well, Sunday I started with the bactine on my FB newt. I put the newt that prefers the water into a paper towel quarantine and started Bactine treatment. She was doing fine. Ate a fish, moving around and then Wed. started getting lythargic. Then Thursday morning I woke to a barely moving newt with blood smeared on the paper towel.

I was devistated! Suddenly, I grabbed the Bactine; it said, "Pain Relieving Cleaning Spray." I just started balling! The pain relief was Lidocaine Hydrochloride, I was so mad at myself for not reading it more carefully!

So, I put my newt on a rock, in a Tupperware container which held all the plants from the aquatic set up and left her to finish dying.

This morning I was already to bury her, but when I looked in the tank, she was sitting on the piece of drift wood and her tail moved. You should have seen me, my husband thought I had gone insane!

She was active again, but definitely not stiff as a board like yesterday morning! I immediately changed the paper towel and the plant water. I also tried to feed her, but she seemed a bit pissed that I would be so absurd.

SO...question...since she prefers the water, should I try the Melafix again? Do you think she was actually dried out and that is why she came back to life? I stopped the Bactine but the site with http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/sores.shtml the treatment mentions bactine w/lidocaine and that the Benzocaine is actually what is toxic.

The arm bone is now visible around the rot and the smallest toe of BOTH back feet are now white. I don't know if I can stand watching her hobble around on 3 stubs!

Thank you for all your help, I don't know what I would do without you all!

Have you tried salt baths and dirt quarantine? Were these not effective?

Once you stop the infection, and fix what caused the infection in the first place, you can put the newt back into the aquatic setup. It'll do just fine in the water with 3 stubs.

It is in the paper towel quarantine now. There is a white spot on each of her little fingers now and she has 1 stubby.

I am doing neosporin (non pain killer) on the fingers and hydrogen peroxide on the stub. It continues to go up the arm.

Is the melafix more effective? At least she was eating there.

Hydrogen peroxide is more of an anaerobic bacteria killer, rather than a fungal killer, which I suspect you have.

Have you tried salt baths? These are less dangerous than using melafix, which is hard to dose correctly.

Some recent data out on the active ingredients of tea tree oil (active ingredient in melafix) indicates that at least in people it can act as a estrogen mimic (endocrine disrupter) (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...070300769.html) for a news paper reference to the preliminary data).

Ed

(Message edited by Ed on July 29, 2006)