Posted by:
coffeeman
at Mon Sep 15 15:32:02 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by coffeeman ]
Okay, so to give you a little background, we got this snake about 1 year ago. He is a male chinese beauty snake, and he is supposed to be roughly 8 years old. He used to be a breeder, but his mate died of a respiratory condition so the guy who had him decided to sell him. When we got him, he had a whistle and a click, and the guy we got him from promptly refunded our money when we told him the estimates on the vet bills. We fixed his husbandry and medicated him, but he never fully recovered, but he got much better (mainly due to the husbandry methinks). He has never been a big eater, but he manages to maintain a reasonable weight.
So, a couple of months ago, we went to look in on him, and his eye looks like it is about to pop out of his head, and there is white tissue bulging out around the top. It appears to have a reddish tint as well. The funny thing is that his breating is also perfect. So we went to our vet. On the way to the vet, the swelling goes down almost completely and his wheeze comes back. The vet gave us eye drops (I think it was gentocyn, but I can't rememeber for sure). The eye drops didn't work, so we went back to the vet. On the trip there, the swelling went down again, and again the wheeze came back. This time we went with .5cc injected amikacin every 3 days for 30 days. Still no improvement, so we went back to the vet. You guessed it, the swelling went down and the wheeze came back. She consulted a veterinary opthamologist who said basically that if it isn't causing any other problems we should probably leave it as any attempt to drain it or operate on it would do more harm than good.
I don't particularly want to accept their resignation to fate, as I really love this snake. Please we really want to use him for educational outreaches that we participate in, as he has an amazingly calm temperment, and he's a really unique specimen compared to the things you normally see at educational outreaches.
So, I come to you, the community, and ask if any of you have heard of this before, or have any ideas?
Pics of the anomaly can be found below (warning, high resolution images, as the vet is going to do osme researching of her own).
Front View
Side View
Top View
Upper Eye Tissue View.
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 Eye Bulges in a Beauty Snake. - coffeeman, Mon Sep 15 15:32:02 2003
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