Phoenix is a female Albino Burmese Python. When we rescued her, she was very sick. She wouldn't eat and was severely underweight, the end portion of her tail was all scabby and rotted, and she had a respiratory infection (which can frequently be deadly in snakes). We call her Phoenix because of the "from the ashes" bit - we didn't expect her to live long, but now it looks like she might be okay!
By mid-January 2003, she seems to be over her respiratory infection. We have been giving her antibiotics and have been taking her to the vet frequently. She now eats, with a little help. We're hoping that over time, her eating will continue to improve. Already, she's looking much healthier. Her tail still looks bad, but as the vet says, "they heal very slowly". Some of the scabs are beginning to fall off, and there seems to be good scar tissue underneath. We are continuing to treat it with antibiotic cream. The vet thinks that once the bulk of it has cleared up, we might have to amputate the last 1/4" of the tail as that really seems black and dead. He didn't want to do anything yet though as we need to see how the rest of the tail fares, and the black section is not spreading.