I have seen little on the topic of skin cancer in chameleons on the forums or online in general, so I thought I'd write my long story here for those interested. I also thought I'd include the costs involved in this situation as there was definitely some sticker shock along the way and regardless of advice I see here all the time, I never thought I'd spend 4 times my investment in purchasing Pablo to treat one skin condition.
So a few months back my panther Chameleon Pablo grew a white, scabby lump on his side, followed by two more within the next couple weeks. I waited another week or so for him to shed and the spots still remained post shed. Ugh.
So, off to the vet, one who is said to have experience with reptiles including chams according to the often referenced lists here. "I've been working with them for 20 years" Great!
Vet Trip 1:
Vet says this is most likely a bacterial infection upon visual inspection. He picks at one of the spots and it crumbles away leaving a little ulcer below it. I ask the vet if it's wise to schedule a biopsy now to be sure, and he recommends trying the most common (and cost effective) treatment for a bacterial cause given that by this point Pablo has been living with the spots for a month and is still eating, etc. In other words, he isn't on death's door, so we'll try the "low hanging fruit".
The vet sends me home with syringes of antibiotic and I learn how to give a chameleon subcutaneous injections. A fun time had by all! I complete the course of antibiotics with no improvement. Reschedule.
Cost of Vet Trip 1: $145
Vet Trip 2:
OK, so now we're going to do the biopsy, I leave Pablo for the day and pick him up.
I get a call from the vet a few days later saying it needed to be sent to another lab because the first one was unsure. Ok...
A few days later the vat calls, says the sample taken was inconclusive, I need to come back in for a bigger biopsy sample. Thankfully, I will not be charged
Cost of Vet Trip 2: $430 Within seconds of paying this amount, I got a shocked text from my spouse "$400???? For what????". Curse Chase bank and their convenient mobile notifctions.
Vet Trip 3:
Much larger biopsy sample taken, completely cutting out of of the spots.
4 days pass, vet leaves me a message that they are still confirming with the backup lab.
2 more days, vet leaves me a message that both labs agree that the issue is squamous cell carcinoma (skin cancer) caused by UV exposure. He asks me if I'm exposing Pablo to UV light... umm derr? I explain I'm using a reptisun 5.0 and a small halogen for heating and that it's my understanding that Pablo needs said lighting/heating. More on this below...
Vet asks me to bring Pablo in again to talk next steps.
Vet Trip 3 cost: Free (makeup biopsy)
Vet Trip 4:
The vet says he's unsure on what to do other than remove the other spots and hope for the best. Through all of this Pablo's scars from the biopsies are healing fine and he's still eating/drinking/acting normally.
Pablo is there right now getting the other two spots removed.
Cost of trip 4: $240
So, we're closing in on the $1000 mark in expenses here pretty soon and really all I know if that they says it's cancer, caused by UVB, and I'm using the recommended lighting (sort of, I use a halogen rather than incandescent at the advice of a couple on the forum).
So a couple of theories.
1) It is the halogen light (Philips PAR20 50w as recommended by a forum member). Pablo's body temps are 85-90 when basking and FWIW he doesn't have any burns.
2) It's due to a change in Pablo's exposure to UVB. For what it's worth, my vet poo-poo'd this idea. But he also asked me if I'd been exposing my reptile to UV lighting which i guess he should figure I am, right? Anyway, here's the story.
I purchased Pablo from an individual owner on craigslist. He was apparently 9 months old and really, almost pure white. See?
When I posted pics of him back then, there was uncertainty about both his locale and his sex from forum members because he just looked so odd. Someone even suggested he was a hermaphrodite.
While I don't post on the forum here much, I read it multiple times a day. I took all kinds of advice about Pablo's setup. Varied feeders, gutloading from Sandrachameleon's blogs, new 2x2x4 cage, AZ mister, live plants... I could go on and on. One thing I learned was that the clear plastic cover on the Zilla light fixture from the previous owner was filtering out UVB.
So I removed it.
Within only a month, Pablo looked like a colorful male chameleon.
In another month or so, he started really coloring up... and apparently developing skin cancer.
So my theory there was maybe this rapid change from an apparently UVB deficient environment to full Reptisun 5.0 exposure somehow spurned the rapid cancerous growth in Pablo's skin cells. Like if you took that kid from the movie "Powder" to the Sahara after he'd been living in Grandma's basement his whole life. He might be more prone to skin cancer, right? The vet says "It doesn't happen like that" but at the same time has no advice for me on how to PREVENT this moving forward.
That's the story as it stands now. I know... TL,DR.
Kevin
So a few months back my panther Chameleon Pablo grew a white, scabby lump on his side, followed by two more within the next couple weeks. I waited another week or so for him to shed and the spots still remained post shed. Ugh.
So, off to the vet, one who is said to have experience with reptiles including chams according to the often referenced lists here. "I've been working with them for 20 years" Great!
Vet Trip 1:
Vet says this is most likely a bacterial infection upon visual inspection. He picks at one of the spots and it crumbles away leaving a little ulcer below it. I ask the vet if it's wise to schedule a biopsy now to be sure, and he recommends trying the most common (and cost effective) treatment for a bacterial cause given that by this point Pablo has been living with the spots for a month and is still eating, etc. In other words, he isn't on death's door, so we'll try the "low hanging fruit".
The vet sends me home with syringes of antibiotic and I learn how to give a chameleon subcutaneous injections. A fun time had by all! I complete the course of antibiotics with no improvement. Reschedule.
Cost of Vet Trip 1: $145
Vet Trip 2:
OK, so now we're going to do the biopsy, I leave Pablo for the day and pick him up.
I get a call from the vet a few days later saying it needed to be sent to another lab because the first one was unsure. Ok...
A few days later the vat calls, says the sample taken was inconclusive, I need to come back in for a bigger biopsy sample. Thankfully, I will not be charged
Cost of Vet Trip 2: $430 Within seconds of paying this amount, I got a shocked text from my spouse "$400???? For what????". Curse Chase bank and their convenient mobile notifctions.
Vet Trip 3:
Much larger biopsy sample taken, completely cutting out of of the spots.
4 days pass, vet leaves me a message that they are still confirming with the backup lab.
2 more days, vet leaves me a message that both labs agree that the issue is squamous cell carcinoma (skin cancer) caused by UV exposure. He asks me if I'm exposing Pablo to UV light... umm derr? I explain I'm using a reptisun 5.0 and a small halogen for heating and that it's my understanding that Pablo needs said lighting/heating. More on this below...
Vet asks me to bring Pablo in again to talk next steps.
Vet Trip 3 cost: Free (makeup biopsy)
Vet Trip 4:
The vet says he's unsure on what to do other than remove the other spots and hope for the best. Through all of this Pablo's scars from the biopsies are healing fine and he's still eating/drinking/acting normally.
Pablo is there right now getting the other two spots removed.
Cost of trip 4: $240
So, we're closing in on the $1000 mark in expenses here pretty soon and really all I know if that they says it's cancer, caused by UVB, and I'm using the recommended lighting (sort of, I use a halogen rather than incandescent at the advice of a couple on the forum).
So a couple of theories.
1) It is the halogen light (Philips PAR20 50w as recommended by a forum member). Pablo's body temps are 85-90 when basking and FWIW he doesn't have any burns.
2) It's due to a change in Pablo's exposure to UVB. For what it's worth, my vet poo-poo'd this idea. But he also asked me if I'd been exposing my reptile to UV lighting which i guess he should figure I am, right? Anyway, here's the story.
I purchased Pablo from an individual owner on craigslist. He was apparently 9 months old and really, almost pure white. See?
When I posted pics of him back then, there was uncertainty about both his locale and his sex from forum members because he just looked so odd. Someone even suggested he was a hermaphrodite.
While I don't post on the forum here much, I read it multiple times a day. I took all kinds of advice about Pablo's setup. Varied feeders, gutloading from Sandrachameleon's blogs, new 2x2x4 cage, AZ mister, live plants... I could go on and on. One thing I learned was that the clear plastic cover on the Zilla light fixture from the previous owner was filtering out UVB.
So I removed it.
Within only a month, Pablo looked like a colorful male chameleon.
In another month or so, he started really coloring up... and apparently developing skin cancer.
So my theory there was maybe this rapid change from an apparently UVB deficient environment to full Reptisun 5.0 exposure somehow spurned the rapid cancerous growth in Pablo's skin cells. Like if you took that kid from the movie "Powder" to the Sahara after he'd been living in Grandma's basement his whole life. He might be more prone to skin cancer, right? The vet says "It doesn't happen like that" but at the same time has no advice for me on how to PREVENT this moving forward.
That's the story as it stands now. I know... TL,DR.
Kevin
