Subcutaneous Emphysema on chameleon

FunkyMunkey80

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So yesterday my boyfriend was working on Mochi’s cage, so he put him on his basking tree outside. Mochi was left unattended for maybe 3 to 5 minutes, and when my boyfriend looked and didn’t see him on the tree. The frantic search begin. He found him on our dog’s bed, covered in slobber and our 7 years old dog was sitting by the bed watching him. My boyfriend picked Mochi up and examined him, didn’t see anything wrong and put him back in the cage. When I came downstairs, he told me what happened and of course I ran to the cage to examine Mochi. And saw a bunch of bumps that was on the left side of his body, which my boyfriend said it wasn’t there earlier when he examined him. I freaked out and took Mochi to the emergency vet immediately, we have an awesome reptile vet 20 minutes from us. After examination, it was determined Mochi has skin trauma from my dog picking him up when he downclimbed the tree and was at eye level with him. I have included pictures below so everyone can see what it looks like, it’s called Subcutaneous Emphysema, which is air bubbles trapped under the skin. We were given antibiotics and anti inflammatory for Mochi, and directions to keep a close eye on him for the next few days in case there was internal damage that we couldn’t see. The vet didn’t think a x-ray was necessary since Mochi was moving around normally.

Update from today:
I woke up and checked on him first thing in the morning, and he was his normal self minus the bump on his side. Some of the bumps had gone away except for one large one. He ate all his BSFL and a hornworm, and ran onto my arms when I opened the cage. It was a huge sigh of relief for me. It was a honest mistake since we’re new chameleon owners, but a good lesson to learn. Never leave your chameleon unatteneded! Please don’t be rude in your comments, I’m posting this because I trying to look up information on dog bites and subcutaneous emphysema on chameleons yesterday, and was not able to find any. So figured I post this up here to share my experience, since this forum has been super informative about chameleon care. Thank goodness Mochi seems to be ok and will recover soon!! BTW, the emergency vet bill plus meds was not ridiculously expensive ($185), it was totally worth it to get some reassurance that Mochi was ok.
 

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I've never heard of subcutaneous emphysema in a chameleon.
Maybe it was just swellings from the dog gripping it?

Me neither! I thought for sure Mochi was done for when I saw the bubbles and thought the pressure from the dog's teeth must've punctured some internal organ. But today when I was able to touch the bubble, it felt like air inside and shifted around pretty easily, he didn't seem to mind me touching it either.
 
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