Hi all,
My girlfriend and I own an Albino California kingsnake of unknown age or origin. All we know is she is INCREDIBLY old. She was given to us by a couple who no longer wanted to care for her. Her name is Kira, and she's been in our possession for not quite two years now.
Last week I was looking at her just before feeding time and noticed a lump that immediately alarmed me. Normally, she is roughly 4cm in diameter at her thickest, and this lump was large, oval in shape and her body was distended to nearly 6cm.
We took her to the vet the next day, where the vet aspirated the lump and took a small sample. It was obviously a solid mass, as very little fluid was collected through the syringe. She was given a small dose of antibiotics as the mouth presented with a fairly dark purple color at the time of examination.
The pathology report came back on Tueday, Dec 18, my girlfriend took the call from the vet. We learned that it was in fact a tumor, suggesting it could be a type of spindle cell tumor or sarcoma. Either way, it was aggressive. While it could likely be felt earlier in it's lifespan, it grew from a completely undetectable (from a visual standpoint) mass to a swelling twice the size of her body practically overnight.
I got in touch with the vet on Wednesday the 19th, and discussed options with him. The three options were to do nothing, surgery, or put her to sleep. It should be obvious to any fellow snake owner what choice I made.
My vet cleared his schedule and booked me in for first thing Thursday morning (this morning, as I write this) for surgery. Here, we made the difficult decision on how the doctor should proceed in a "worst-case" scenario (i.e, after she has been opened up, they find that the tumor is too invasive and nothing can be done to improve her quality of life.) That was tough. With a $400 deposit, we were out the door with little Kira in the hands of our vet.
We walked out the door at 8:30, and spent the next few hours hoping we wouldn't hear my phone ring (The sooner we get a phone call, the more likely it is that there is bad news.) At noon, we get a call that she survived surgery successfully and that a large mass was removed. It was attached to the pancreas (if you are unaware - the pancreas deals with digestive enzymes and glucose regulation in the body, and disruption could cause, basically, diabetes and/or impaction) so a small portion of pancreas did have to be removed, but the Doctor felt confident that he removed most, if not all of the mass.
I went in at 8pm to pick Kira up. At this point, she was still heavily affected by the anesthetic. Completely unresponsive, the weakest sign of breathing, and utterly limp. I was given the decision to leave her at the vet office overnight, where there would be no one present until the morning, or take her home right then and risk being unable to deal with any sort of complication that came up. I considered that if there were complications, it wouldn't matter where she was - either in the hands of layman or in an empty office. I packed her limp body safely into her carrier with a big sealed tupperware full of warm water to provide heat on the cold drive home.
I got home, opened the carrier in front of her home that we had prepared and sanitized for her, and when I opened the pillowcase I was greeted by a little snake face excitedly tonguing at my hands. It was...beautiful. I can tell you for a fact that she is the toughest snake I've ever met, because I am sure that at that moment she just needed to thank me in her own little way for helping her, and to let me know she will be okay. After I moved her to her home, she resumed a similarly limp disposition. I think within a day or two, the anesthetic should be mostly out of her system - here's hoping the worst is behind her now.
Anyways, for those interested, I asked the vet to provide me with some photos of the lump that was removed. It is about 4 x 4 x 5 cm in an irregular oval shape. These photos are after it had been dissected into 4 pieces for pathology tests.
cancer - Imgur
Thanks for reading, and please wish our Kira a speedy recovery.
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