kidneys vs elastics

[choriona]

Okay, I have a little story that I wanted to share. It is about my half-blind 5 year old male veiled. Some of you might have read about him earlier. But I will do a re-cap. In the middle of August he started to get a swelling in his left eye, and he was scratching it on sticks quite often. I tried washing his eye out with human eye drops, but this did not seem to help. I put him in the shower to try and clear the eye out. Still, it got worse.

We went to the vet, and she gave me anti-bacterial eye ointment and an oral anti-bacterial medication, believing that it may have been a surface abrasion that became infected. A week of this treatment did not bring the swelling down. In fact, the ointment appeared to make it worse after every application.

Once the treatment was over, the swelling came down on its own, but some of the tissue on his eye-lid had died. There was a scar or scab there and it had gone black. For the course of the medication, I had been hand feeding him, and he lived in an observation tank I hastily put together for him. Now that the swelling was down, he surprised me by eating on his own. Even though he can barely see out of the one eye, he was able to correctly aim his tongue and successfully catch slow moving prey.

[choriona]

I moved him back to his house and he continued eating great….but I noticed he had not passed a fecal in quite some time. In the observation tank, there was none, but I was not worried because he had such a liquid diet. But in his new cage, no poop for over a month now. In the mean time, taking with the vet, I found out that vitamin A deficiencies can cause blindness and is sometimes coupled with kidney failure. And there is no real way to check for kidney problems without actually having surgery to remove a part of the kidney. So it seemed to fit. Petri must be suffering from kidney failure. All I could do for him is make sure he could live comfortably until he passed on.

Then, just yesterday, 2 months since I last noticed a fecal, and 1 month since the last confirmed urate excretion, about 60 or so mealworms later……he finally went to the bathroom. And to my surprise, there was one of the elastics used to close the cricket bag. How he decided that was food, I do not know. When he ate it, I do not know. How he got it, this I do know. Most of my chameleons free-roam, and buying crickets every week, I have a lot of these elastics laying around. I am smart enough to pick them up off the floor so that the baby cannot eat them, but I never thought that one of my chameleons would.

So, hopefully this elastic did not damage anything internally as it traveled though his system. He has been miserable and moody for the entire duration of its passage. I am sharing this story because it is bizarre and unique. Maybe an x-ray at the vet’s office would have revealed this obstruction, but I didn’t want to pay for that when I thought he was just having eye problems, or un-curable kidney problems.

For now, I am waiting again for another fecal. Hopefully it is normal. His appetite is great and his mood is improving.

[Tara Garratt]

Congratulations! Hopefully all will be OK now.

Tara Garratt

[drewlowe]

Wow what a strange story. I'm glad he's doing better now and i hope he keeps on improving. Good luck with everything and keep us updated on him.

[eyespy]

If you are still worried about the kidneys, a simple blood test can pick up a lot of kidney problems and some of them are treatable. A CBC with CHEM 20 can pick up gout, dehydration-related kidney disesase where minerals collect in the kidneys, infections, and many forms of decreased, increased, or failed kidney functions. Serum levels of vitamin A can also be drawn. Too much vitamin A can be more damaging than too little, so if you are choosing to supplement the diet try to find vitamins that contain only beta carotene so your cham can make just enough vitamin A and not get an overdose.

[meow_mix450]

Hmmmm a very very intresting story. Everyone makes mistakes. Im guessing that your telling us this to learn from your mistake??? Not to leave things on the floor, i could be wrong. But im glad to hear that its ok:) keep us posted

Meow

[Wuntu Menny]

An amazing tale! Glad to hear he's come around. The rubber band must have looked like a tasty worm to him. he's proving to be quite a resilient little chameleon.

WM

[choriona]

Thanks for the comments everyone.
Wuntu - that is exactly what I thought!
Eyespy - I will consider that. Thanks for the info.

[Trace]

I’m glad Petri is feeling better. I hope you will see a marked improvement in him now. Hey, we’ve all had animals that have eaten stupid things... my freeroaming iguana ate a used Bounce sheet once. Like you, I had no idea when it went in the front end but it certainly was a surprise when it came out the back end. She was fine... and had no “static-cling” issues at all that winter.

Cheers!

Trace