Cyrus' history

lele

Avid Member
I am going to lay this out strictly for reference. It can be hard to follow fractured threads so here it is all in one place.


October - began closing right eye several times/day for extended periods as well as more than usual bulging, rubbing. I live in NH so figured it was due to dry air and upped his misting, humidity (use a humidifier), etc.

Nov/Dec this continued so I put out some feelers thinking Vit A. and brought him to my vet. Dosed him with 8000ui (.1cc) of palmitate 2x one week apart (per Gary Ferguson)

no change. There was NO discharge, crusting or any other outward symptom, check mouth, no ulceration, abscess etc..

Early Dec. vet looked in eye, flushed and he prescribed Tobramycin drops (1drop 3x/day for 7 days)

no change, no new signs

early Jan. he then prescribed Dexamethasone 1 drop 4x/day for 5 days

no change to eye, but some neck edema was developing

I then tried OTC lubricating eye drops (Bion Tears) to see if I could give him some relief. I was giving him showers a few times/ week, too. As all of this was going on he was eating, pooping and acting normal other than more bulging and rubbing.

Feb. 3 gave injection of Amikacin 1ml and I was to give two more 3 days apart

still no change

Feb. 10 As this increased, the vet did some blood work and all was normal. He was unable to get enough for white blood cell count and was more interested in liver, uric acid, calcium, phosphorus. His Glucose was unusually high, but we did a urinalysis on 2/13. He said the glucose can fluctuate due to stress and other factors.

Blood Test Results (2/10)
His test results were:
AST (SGOT) 8
Total Protein 6.1
Glucose 329
Calcium 9.1
Phosphorus 5.4
Uric Acid 1.7

Urinalysis Results (2/13)

pH 6
trace protein
blood 3++ (within normal range)
glucose - negative

He was a little lethargic, but still shooting food, just not coming out onto his jungle gym (I have a ceiling gym set up which he often roams) so I just chalked it up to severe dry eye and hoped it would clear up with warmer temps and humid days, but that will be another few months!

THEN on 2/23
I noted yellow/orange goo coming from the eye. The day before it seemed a bit filmy (I use a 16x hand lens to look) I was going to attach some close up photos to show the goo and edema, closed eye and what seems to be a slight bulge (the vet saw this, too and when he looked in his eye he saw nothing to create that bulge, but figured they would be too big so I have them all here. Cyrus' eye they are high resolution so you can click to make larger several times for real close-ups

You can only see the goo when the eye is open - no sign of it when closed which seems odd to me. It's like a little ball.

I brought him to the vet that day. I left him there so he could put him under and look around to see if there was a foreign body lodged that he was unable to see before. He did not see anything, put Teramycin ointment on/in and told me to call Monday with update. I had none except that nothing had changed. His eye was closed all weekend.

He ate a few silkmoths with right eye closed, but when he went for a superworm he opened his right eye but was very unsteady and gave up trying to shoot. I do not think he can see clearly, maybe not at all with right eye.
see

My vet said the only two options that he can see left is to slit the lid and pull back to see if anything is there. He has never done it on a chameleon and not too sure about his confidence level (respected his honesty) or an MRI to see if there is something behind the eye, but I would have to take him down to MA and looking at $1200 - financially out of the question.

I have had other chameleons and his setup is fine (2x2x4 screen cage covered on 3 sides with plastic to help with humidity, well gutloaded prey so do minimal supplementing, replace UVB ever 6 months (use Reptisun 5.0) basking temps 90 +/- large schefflera, branches and places for him to go. He is a surprisingly "domestic" chameleon and will let me handle him when taking him to the shower or the vet.

So there is my story. I know this was long but wanted to lay out all the details. Btw, just today I noticed that at the underside crease of his front feet seems to be red. After a nice long, warm shower Monday night he was pushing his eye up against the screen REALLY hard - you can see this in the pics.

It seemed to be drying up today (Wed) and shrinking and he was more active and had it open more than usual.
 
i think the rubbing hard against the screen is a good thing. keep in mind how long it takes for chams to showing prgressing in healing etc., their metabolism is very slow.
i think cyrus is very lucky, you seem to be doing all you can for him, i would keep up the showers and maybe 1 of the eye drops/treatments. if something is in there it may slowly work its way out and even if it got out it would take a while for his eye to feel better.
good luck keep updating
drew
 
Hi Drew,

Actually much has happened since that was posted. The latest update is hereCyrus update. We should know biopsy results in a day or two. It's so awful to know that this "thing" has been developing since October, or at least began bothering him way back then. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that even if they take the eye I don't lose him.

Thanks for your post. Btw, where in NYC are you? I was born in Queens :)
 
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