Criagslist Rescue - Sienna's progress

[ncc74656]

how can eggs get into a beardies abdomen? isnt there an egg sac that they have to incubate them in? beardies are not A sexual? the previous owner tried to breed her and failed? wtf?

 

[SkeptiBee]

It's not really incubation so much as its development. Since we know that some of her eggs ruptured, its possible that the tissue housing those eggs might have been damaged and tore, allowing small bits to escape her body cavity. I'm a little confused though with egg development though... I can find info regarding how it occurs, but there isn't anything indepth. Just egg production begins and the stages of egg development. But how they travel through the organs as multiple eggs develop I can't seem to find any info. At least yet. I'm sure there is something out there.

I really have no clue if they we trying to breed her. I think they were just clueless on how to take care of beardies and never bothered to look up proper husbandry. Since beardies don't need to breed to produce eggs, I wager that she started to develop them but due to either poor health, husbandry, environment conditions, she would/could not lay them. As a result, she had the ruptures and internal problems.

The good news is she is doing very well! She's catching her roaches and worms, looking straight at them now instead of tilting her head to see them. I do think she has some vision problems, probably from poor lighting before. She still misses her feeders sometimes and the male nymph roaches are a little too fast for her to catch. They run laps around her viv though so when they make a pass near her, she'll make a grab for them. She isn't that mobile yet. She will take a few steps then lay down, preferring to just lay still and calm. But she will keep her head up and look at her surroundings. When she's in my lap, she will lick things and explore what is immediately around her.

I will need to figure out how to get her to eat her greens because she doesn't touch them. She also has not pooped all this week either which is concerning me a bit but if her belly is still sore, she might not want to strain too much. I'm hesitant to put her in a bath since she has the stitches but it has helped her with pooping. She's also being a good girl and taking her antibiotics.

This is all just in the first week from her surgery. I think she's going to be fine in the coming weeks!

 

[SkeptiBee]

So the pathology results on the lump and the black scales came in today. It's good news, bad news. The good news is the lump was a large cyst that is benign in nature. The bad news is the black scales tested positive for melanoma. The vet said this becoming common in beardies and there really is no treatment for it other than just giving them the best care you can and allowing them to live full lives. I plan on setting up a post surgery appointment in a few weeks to have the vet check on the stitches and check for other black scales. Sienna still has a few on her body and we can consider removing them or just leaving them, depending. Internally, she didn't see any blacking of organs or tissue that would suggest problems but there is a chance that can happen at a later date. It just depends on how aggressive the melanoma becomes. Honestly, I'm really bummed about this news.

 

[destiny1998]

That poor girl! I was just thinking of her earlier today. So she was burnt when she was younger? Is that how she got melanoma?

 

[SkeptiBee]

I really can't say for sure if she was burnt. It's what I speculate happened, but what I think happened is kind of irrelevant considering I have no proof of it. All I can do is make Sienna happy now and I plan on doing just that! Burns, fungus, or whatever caused her eye deformity.

There is no certainty it's related to the melanoma either. I've been doing some digging and I found a 2011 study done on multiple reptiles with melanophoromas and if treatment was curative or not. It wasn't in all cases but sometimes it depended on the stage of cancer and if it was malignant or not. It seemed to have a large number of beardies that were afflicted. There's a lot of medical jargon, but if you look up the terms you can get an idea of what is going on. Anyway, you download it at this link.

The last part was what I was more interested in. Here is a quote:

Choromatophoromas appear to be relatively common tumours in reptiles. In Bearded Dragons melanophoromas represented 21.6% of all tumours in the study and represented 85% of the choromatophoromas found in lizards. To the authors knowledge there are no previous reports of melanophoromas in acacondas, pigmy rattlesnakes, southern water snakes, veiled chameleons, leopard geckos, or savannah monitors.

In eight cases surgical removal of the tumour was curative. Recurrence was observed in three cases and visceral metastases occurred in six cases. In ten cases the animals were humanely destroyed and three other reptiles died a short time after diagnosis.

I would also note: many that had to be euthanized were also in poor health that the prognosis for recovery was very small.

I guess one good thing about reading this, if it's epidermal there is a good chance removing the melanoma scales she has might help in curing her. That's assuming though that metastasis hasn't occurred and began attacking internal organs.

 

[destiny1998]

Well I'm really sorry you and her have to go through this. At least she knows she's loved and being taken care of. I was going to ask if you can post a picture? I'd love to see how she looks since being well taken care of by a good beardie mom

 

[SkeptiBee]

Thank you! I definitely am trying my best to keep her comfy and happy.

I apologize for the delay in photos. I've been taking more video of her than stills and I went through a computer format and reinstall, moved her viv, among other things since last week. Every time I sit down at the computer I get side tracked. :roll: Anyway, on with some pics!


Last week I went and bought her some fleece fabric so she could have her own blankie. I had been using a towel for her and she still kept hooking her claws in it despite them being trimmed down. Part of her stitches near her eye have fallen out too. She looks much better with that nasty lump gone.


Chillin on my jeans. She loves to cuddle with me! She loves it even more when she can rest her entire body on my forearm. She grabs hold around my wrist and elbow and refuses to let go! When I put her back into her viv, she tightens her grip and gives me this look like, "Nuh uh! Not going anywhere!"


Sleeping. I caught her all sprawled out. Usually she throws her right arm up above her head and the other laying behind her. Never tucks them against her.

Here's a recent video I took of her. She's moving around more and is chasing, albeit slowly, her feeders. If the video doesn't play, try viewing later. It's editing something right now and seems to be taking forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5fBIPqOFQ


I wasn't sure if anyone else would be interested in seeing this, but here are her X-Rays. You can see just how fat and full of her eggs she is. No wonder she barely wanted to eat, her stomach was probably so compressed she had no room.

If anyone was interested, here is her pathology report.

 

[ncc74656]

wow! she looks much better, is she able to see clearly out of her eye there? it looks very good compared to before but will that missing scale ever grow back around the eye there or will she forever not be able to close it?

im amazed by that xray, i had no idea a beardie could have 2/3 of her abdomen full of eggs O.O

 

[SkeptiBee]

Yes she can see out of her eye just fine! She can also close them too. The scales she lost when the lump was removed I don't think will grow back. I believe once they are gone, that's it. But the area the vet removed, is stitched up well enough that you can barely see where the incision and extraction was made. Over all, she'll have a bit of scarring there, but it's not going to be bad (at least I don't think it will). Besides, I'd rather have the scar than have the lump! At least now she can look at her food straight on and not have to tilt her head anymore!

I'm not sure if all of that white material is eggs or not but I can still see a LOT floating around in there. It really is amazing their little bodies can hold that amount!

 

[ncc74656]

what was she like just after the operation? id expect that having so much weight removed and having regained sight in her eye that must have been one hell of an experience for her. like one of us getting a gastric bypass and a cornea transplant in one day...

 

[SkeptiBee]

She was pretty out of it and just slept a lot the first two days. Her color was also really dull, almost ash grey. By day three she was slowly moving. She'd move one step, stop and rest, move another step, stop and rest, rinse repeat. It took her a full four days before she was moving around like before. Now that a considerable amount of time has passed, she has become more mobile than before the surgery. She's not running or moving quickly. Just a slow steady pace that involves more than three or four steps before collapsing. I'd say her progress has been very swift for only having her a little over a month! So long as the melanoma doesn't get worse, I think she'll make a great recovery!

 

[destiny1998]

Omg! She is sooooooo precious! Im so happy to see how well she looks

 

[SkeptiBee]

Okay, so I got some photos of her today that are so freakin gorgous! I came home and immediately went to check on her, as I'm wont to do, and she was leaning up against one of her newest decor pieces I found. When I saw it at PetSmart I really loved the color and shape, and her situated the way she was made for some excellent images.





She ate a full bowl of greens again today, as well as wolfed down a lot of roaches and some superworms. She still hasn't passed a poop though. :/ I gave her some olive oil yesterday so I'm hoping in a few days something passes.

 

[Esther19]

Excellent pictures!

 

[SkeptiBee]

Thanks! I really like how they came out!

She finally passed a poop yesterday early morning. It was the mega poops of mega poops, but she seemed happy to have finally removed it from her system. Was very very mobile that whole day. lol She also has a post op appointment tomorrow and I'm going to have the rest of her black scales looked at. Depending on the vets recommendation, we may go forward with removal but I still want to wait a bit for that until she's fully healed from her spay surgery.