Eugene's medical mystery

lainezor

Member
Hello guys, you might remember me from a post several months ago about Eugene's lumps. This is going to be a long story. I have been struggling for the last 9.5 months with my 2.5 year old male veiled chameleon Eugene. He has been through several vet trips and we still dont know what is going on with him. I am hoping that maybe someone out there has advice or an idea of how to treat him best.

In april 2014, Eugene fell and broke his back leg. He had a splint as it healed slightly bowed but never seemed to slow him down. The bump on his hip appeared there first but didnt seem to worsen or bother him at all. The other bumps didnt show up until a year and a half later.

Since November 2015 he has had hard lumps grow on his body, his muscles have become weak. He has had blood work three times and 2 biopsies as well as countless checkups and an x-ray. The second biopsy was a little over a month ago and the results were that he has non-cancerous "granulomas" no sign of bacteria or infection was found and no sign of uric acid! We had for sure thought that it was gout and he even was on allopurinol for about a month (which showed no improvements and lumps continued to worsen). We thought that it was for sure gout because his uric acid level in the blood was over 1200(normal is under 600). Starting in about March he has developed edema all around his neck, tail, and back legs. He weighs a whopping 355 grams but I think some of that is the fluid from edema.

I think that my vet may not be a chameleon expert but he has been very responsive to my emails and inquires. There are no other chameleon vets for hours of driving so I have been going to him frequently.

Eugene continues to be alert and eat on his own which is honestly the only bit of hope I have for him. He is being fed mostly "calci-worms" with the occasional hornworms, silkworms, butterworms and crickets. I have stopped dusting with d3 and have made a point to get at least 15 minutes of sunlight on him everyday (weather permitting in Ontario Canada) to rule out oversupplimentation of d3 (which I dont think it was but who knows at this point).

My panther chameleon is perfectly healthy and acting normal and he has had the same supplements as Eugene. I did notice that Eugene's first bloodwork came back with his calcium:phosphorus ratio at barely over 1:1 which is too low. The vet gave him a calcium shot and nothing changed (this was months ago now).

I replaced the reptisun 5.0 in may just to be sure that everything was right.

The part that really confuses me is that I have spent so much time and effort trying to perfect my reptile's care routines that I don't think I caused this problem. The feeders never had a high-protein diet. The chameleons always had water and I never noticed an orange urate from him before.

So here's where it gets strange.On November 22, 2015 I went to feed my leopard geckos and I was absolutely devastated to find my 2 year old female leo had passed away. It was the most shocking moment of my life as she had seemed perfectly healthy and was not underweight or anything. I had all my other pets looked at and tested for parasites. my bearded dragon which is in the other room had pinworms and was treated, everyone else was fine. Vet told me that Eugene looked healthy and the bumps were barely noticeable at that point.

I took home a wild caught werner's chameleon in January of 2015 (I know I am back tracking but this is relevant). His cage was about 3 feet to the left of Eugene's cage. Despite eating and testing negative for parasites, my werner's never gained weight. He was small at only 26g. Never gained or lost a single gram in almost a full year. Just before x mas 2015, he started to close his one eye and stopped eating in the span of a couple days, he went from 0-100 really fast and saw the vet on a friday morning. Saturday he passed away. Our best guess was that he had a lung infection or something from being wild caught.

I am scared Eugene might have the same thing. About 2 weeks ago I was feeding Eugene 2 superworms with vitamin dust (herptivite) and I noticed his Edema got super awful. His eyes swelled up to the point they were bulging out of his sockets and it scared the hell out of me. I left for work and when I got home (~4 hrs later), his edema had gone down a fair bit and his eyes were back to normal. A few days later his one eye started to close. (his lights are the right ones and fairly far away so its not uv burns) After a couple days of showering him to flush it out he started closing the other one sometimes. It honestly looks like it is "sticking" shut. I took him into the vet and he did a CBC on his blood and it came back as normal. The eyes are slightly crusty so he gave me 10 days of oral baytril, 5 days of metacam and 5-7 days of eye drops. It was day 7 today of treatment and his eyes dont look much better.

I have noticed that he now has ANOTHER problem and I am wondering if this is vet trip worthy. His tail is missing parts of the spikes along the spine and it is black. I have put betadine on it and some other ointments and I want to be sure that it is not fungal or needing vet attention.

I have attached a whole album to this post which will have in depth explanations and dates of what has happened to Eugene.

He has had metronidazole a few times as well as baytril at the moment. I always made sure that he is hydrated by giving him 2-3 ML of water by syringe daily for the last several months.

Last note is that as of Wenesday my AC broke and it has been hot as hell and humid in my apartment. I have been trying everything to cool it down but Eugene is gaping sometimes. I am worried the black spots on his tail are from too much heat. AC is supposed to be fixed tomorrow morning.

Sorry for the huge post but Eugene means the entire world to me and I am willing to do anything to help him. Any insight is so very much appreciated as well as your support means a lot as well. My 4 other reptiles are all doing very well, Thankfully.

Here is album with all the descriptions and time lines http://imgur.com/a/rE837

I forgot to add he got bloodwork again on april 5th which showed that the uric acid level had dropped down to about 650. I will request the actual results tomorrow and post them here for comparison.


I just added the report for the biopsy to the album at the bottom and here: http://i.imgur.com/6triI9p.jpg CBC results here" http://imgur.com/4jhsGFw

Sorry for the long story but Eugene has been sick for the last 10 months and I am willing to do anything and everything it takes to help him feel better. It would be great if I could get a vets opinion on the bloodwork/histo/biopsy results too as I am not too sure my vet is a chameleon expert.
 
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