It has been a long journey for a young green sea turtle rescued on the first of November, nicknamed ‘Fitzy’. Fitzy was found with heavy coverage of fibropapilloma tumors around all of his flippers, neck, and even covering his eyes. Poor Fitzy was extremely anemic due to the vascular tumors and the large amount of salt water leaches all over his body that were stealing his blood supply.

After getting him cleaned up, Fitzy was tube fed for over a month until he finally started to eat on his own. After another month of strengthening, it was safe for Fitzy to start undergoing surgeries. His first surgery was an endoscopy to search for internal tumors; we were very happy not to find any and we started to remove the external tumors from the turtle.

Fitzy having his last surgery, performed by Dr. Cathy Connelly of Marathon Vet. Hospital

It took three surgical procedures by Dr. Mader and the amazing staff of Marathon Veterinary Hospital to remove the large amount of tumors, with several weeks in between each to allow him to recover. Fitzy had his final surgery on April 9th performed by Dr. Connelly and is now tumor-free! After a one year period with no tumor re-growths, Fitzy will be released off of Grassy Key where he was found.

Fitzy swims tumor-free!