urgent help please! male panther bleeding from vent!

my almost one year old male nosy be is bleeding from his vent, he gets watered 3 times a day and and his diet has been the same since i got him several months ago i just noticed his eyes were sunken is like crazy and that he's bleeding from his vent, is all the years I have raised reptiles especially chameleons I have NEVER even come close to a problem like this, I am terrified i am going to lose him! somebody please help

Take him to the vet! That is the only way you are going to save him. I know most vets require an appt but if they see he is bleeding they will take him in.

my vet told me if that if i had any chameleon questions the only person that could help me even remotely in my area would be a reptile biologist at university of pa 2 hours away, i am so scared my vet said all he can do is force fluids in him and give him antibiotics

Do you have any way of contacting the biologist? Fill out the how to ask for help form and I will see if there is anything there that I can help you with. Was he injured and how bad is the bleeding? Pics help immensely.

i keep calling my vet for the number and no ones answering? I noticed a drop of blood on the floor of his cage this morning and thought nothing of it because I'm pretty sure he passed his sperm plug and with a few of my males they have dropped a drop of blood with the sperm plug before but it was just dripping out, its stopped and has started coagulating which i think twas the problem is that he wouldn't get enough air to coagulate the blood because i believe he torn a bit of his vent thats what it looks like at least, his eyes are really sunken in though, i feel like i have a sick child

Are they closed for the holiday?? Or maybe out to lunch? I don't know what you could do... I mean you could try the sugar paste, but I'm not exactly sure if that will benefit your specific situation.

Put sugar in water and make sure there is a bit more sugar than water so that it is tacky, and rub it in the affected area.

Or Polysporin?

Hmm maybe he caused an abrasion on his HemiPenes when he was wiping the sperm plug. I know thats not incredibly helpful. But if that were the case, its coagulated now and should begin healing. I'll Ask Dr O to take a look at this thread, he's very helpful.

thank you everyone for your help i believe he scrapped his hemipene on a branch but he doesn't seem weak at all intact he's running around his massive cage as usual

From what you said about his eyes I would definitely push fluids, even if it is a scratch

squeekz1992 said:

From what you said about his eyes I would definitely push fluids, even if it is a scratch

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Agreed.

Ouch! There are a few things that could cause bleeding. It could be bleeding from the colon, urinary tract or reproductive organs. If the bleed was further up in the intestines it would not be dripping like that so it has to be something pretty close to the vent. Even the vent itself could be damaged and bleeding. With males the most likely injury would be to the hemipenes since those can be pushed out when pooping or passing sperm plugs and potentially caught on things. If it is a hemipene then it may need to be amputated. This won't affect his ability to defecate or pass urates and as long as the other one is fine he could still breed. The sunken eyes could be pain or dehydration from blood loss or a combo of both. If it's bleeding that much and his eyes are sunken I would definitely get him into a vet today if at all possible because tomorrow is holiday and there won't be hardly any places at all open. Even if it has stopped bleeding now it could start again. If it's something other than a hemipene then that will definitely need to be investigated further to determine the cause.

Sugar water won't help here since there's no prolapse. And unless you can see the scrape causing the bleeding then antibiotic ointment would probably just be wasted. Unfortunately there's not much you can do about the actual problem at home. It is possible that if he rests and gives it enough time without additional trauma that it will heal up on its own, but the sunken eyes and amount of blood definitely concerns me.

And ferretinmyshoes for the win.

i’m going to disagree with ferret on just one point, that antibiotics would be wasted. i had one of my males try and mate twice a few weeks back, and both times he prolapsed both of his hemipenes and surrounding tissues (talk about an alien appendage!). the second time it was bad enough that i did need to use sugar water to shrink it down before i could replace it in the correct position. afterwards, i used a prescription ointment called Panolog that has a lovely 1” long tip that makes it easy to maneuver it into the hemipenal space and squirt some in. did it every other day for about 10 days and he’s back to normal.

my point is that if there is an abrasion on a hemipene (trauma to which is the most common cause of frank blood by the vent in a male cham), sure, sometimes it may need to be amputated, but i do not think it’s a waste for you to try and get some Neosporin ointment packed into his hemipenal area, particularly since you are having so much difficulty getting to a vet and the upcoming holiday. i would try and find any brand that has more of a pokey tip, and enter the vent with it and direct it caudally (towards the tail). squeeze, and get some in there. i don’t see how it can hurt anything, but can only help. whether or not it helps enough will be determined, but i would try it. and him being dehydrated is certainly a big issue that you need to correct.

and just an fyi to whomever made the comment—air is NOT necessary for blood to clot. everything that makes blood clot is already in the serum. think about a stroke; it’s a blood clot that travels to the brain before it hangs up, but is never exposed to air at any point.

o—

and a quick look at the ARAV website shows a herp vet that looks to be pretty close to you:


Joseph Hyduke
Malvern Veterinary Hospital
www.malvernveterinaryhospital.vetsuite.com
545 S. Warren Ave.
Malvern, PA 19355
(610)647-2626

I just worry that sticking something blindly into a traumatized, now inflammed area could disrupt the clot and trigger more bleeding and further inflammation. Panalog has an anti-inflammatory aspect that would offer that benefit directly. But since neosporin doesn't have that quality then I would be worried you could do more harm than good. And there was no prolapse here to threaten the viability of the tissue. In freshly damaged tissue where infection is not my primary concern because it's a pretty protected area I would give it time to heal undisturbed for a few days to let the inflammation subside and more healing so there's more than just a fragile clot that would be easily disturbed. It wasn't an infection that caused this so an antibiotic ointment may help prevent something but won't fix the problem at hand. And blindly rummaging around with a blunt object in irritated, injured tissue doesn't sound like a good idea to me. With enough inflammation you could cause a prolapse, and then you're in a real pickle.

oooh, the vets disagree!!

well, "rummaging around” wasn’t my idea of applying meds, just squirting some in. and also since Neosporin has such a heavy petroleum gel base, i often find that the gel alone helps to stop bleeding and when packed in a closed area like the hemipenal space, can even help to stop further bleeding from the pressure that it lightly applies to the injured site when it is packed in.

there is no doubt a vet should be looking at this, and Panolog is certainly better than Neosporin, but given the situation i still think it’s an option. but, as ferret properly notes, it’s not one without some risk. but since i don’t believe the medicine itself to be harmful, gentle application is what i was getting at for a relatively harmless procedure.

ferretinmyshoes said:

I just worry that sticking something blindly into a traumatized, now inflammed area could disrupt the clot and trigger more bleeding and further inflammation. Panalog has an anti-inflammatory aspect that would offer that benefit directly. But since neosporin doesn't have that quality then I would be worried you could do more harm than good. And there was no prolapse here to threaten the viability of the tissue. In freshly damaged tissue where infection is not my primary concern because it's a pretty protected area I would give it time to heal undisturbed for a few days to let the inflammation subside and more healing so there's more than just a fragile clot that would be easily disturbed. It wasn't an infection that caused this so an antibiotic ointment may help prevent something but won't fix the problem at hand. And blindly rummaging around with a blunt object in irritated, injured tissue doesn't sound like a good idea to me. With enough inflammation you could cause a prolapse, and then you're in a real pickle.

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actually, i’ve got to even say that you are making a lot of assumptions here.

-we don’t know if the area is inflamed (besides a scratch/laceration itself)
-we don’t know it it’s even the hemipenes, although we both agree it’s most likely
-you say it wasn’t an infection that caused this, but not only don’t we know that, the likelihood of an abrasion on the hemipenes from an exterior source and then packing it away inside the body makes the possibility of an infection starting pretty high imo. so putting in some topical antibiotics that tend to stay in that area for 48-72 hours from one dose seems like good prevention and maybe a fix.

my boy was inflamed with no visible trauma, thus the Panolog. but dripping blood makes the possibility of an open wound so likely i don’t know how you could dismiss the benefit of one or two applications of a topical A/B.

either way, i found you a local vet. giddy-up!

Wounds cause local inflammation by nature, as I'm sure you'd agree. If it's not the hemipenes then squirting neosporin in the hemipene pocket really would be wasted. I'm not saying never with antibiotic ointment, just not yet while the area is still vulnerable to disruption. Especially when there won't be any vet open tomorrow if something were to go wrong. While application of meds seems like no big deal to us vets, that's not necessarily something most people are comfortable with. And with a squirming nearly adult chameleon resisting restraint it most likely will be rummaging around the first few times for someone who doesn't do things like that on a regular basis. And thus, there is the risk of doing more harm than good at this stage. So I would still leave it alone for the next 24-48 hours before trying to mess with it.