No doubt Jupiter Medical Center’s CAT scan team has seen an array of patients cross the hospital’s threshold, but in mid-May, they braced to scan perhaps their most unusual subject. Their patient had gut problems, was on an IV and being treated with antibiotics. He was also not human. He was a loggerhead turtle named Dwight.
Dwight, so named by a sponsor, was originally found in March in Vero Beach without a visible cause of stranding. Responders brought the adult male to Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, where Dr. Heather Barron, Loggerhead’s veterinarian and chief science officer, found him to be anemic and suffering from an impacted gastrointestinal tract. She began treating him.
Within weeks, Dwight began eating on his own. But, he remained emaciated and his lower GI tract wasn’t back to normal. That’s when Barron turned to her colleagues who typically treat humans, ordering the CT scan at Jupiter Medical.
The trip to the hospital stretched only seven miles, but Dwight being Dwight, the Loggerhead staff spent about a half hour just preparing for the move. They had to lower his tank water enough for staff to climb inside, slide a plank underneath him, strap him into the plank and manually lift him out.
They placed the plank with Dwight secured on top onto a rolling gurney and slid the gurney into Loggerhead’s ambulance. Once at the hospital, Barron stood behind the glass with radiologists and her team as Dwight, sedated for the process, was scanned. The pictures promptly loaded on the screens. With multiple views, including a 3D rendering, the professionals gathered saw no signs of an issue — nothing to go in and fix.
Time to pack up Dwight for the return trip. Barron forwarded the scans to an industry peer for a second look. The conclusion: clear. Dwight should be on the path to healing.
It’s possible that Dwight’s problem may have started with a little too much of a tasty thing, Barron said. While living his best ocean life, Dwight may have simply found a good spot for shellfish — the diet favored by the loggerhead species — and continued to eat without discretion.
While that may not pose the same type of problem for other sea turtle species like the leatherback, whose primary diet is jellyfish, a large amount of shellfish such as conch and crab ingested all at once could certainly lead to impaction and other subsequent ailments.
Lucky for Dwight, the treatment provided by Loggerhead Marinelife’s hospital continued to relieve his digestive system. What’s more, he has begun to gain weight.
Of course, healing a sea turtle is not always linear. Because loggerheads can weigh anywhere up to 400 pounds and have the proportionally largest heads of turtles, Dwight’s heavy top shell, or carapace, has weighed on his neck — and his head has been resting on the bottom of the rehab tank — long enough for pressure sores to grow on his neck and jaw.
This issue has presented itself in other turtles who spend time in hard-bottomed rehab tanks. Marine-life experts at Loggerhead and other hospitals have not yet found a reliable way to prevent it. If Dwight’s pressure sores do not heal, Barron will address them surgically.
(Read the remainder of this story, published by The Palm Beach Post.)