parodyofagirl
Hatchling Member
I thought I had been more active on these forums, but I guess I just lurked a lot when Quincy was younger.
Quincy is a 6 year old bearded dragon. She is my little buddy and we haven't spent a day apart since my fiance bought her.
She has surgery scheduled tomorrow to remove a growth from her mouth and I am really freaking out about the whole thing.
She lives in a tall and skinny 55 gal enclosure. We take her out and let her run around for exercise. She has two ceramic heat emitters on top of her enclosure and I have a heating pad underneath. I turn the heating pad on intermittently throughout the day and it stays on for about 45 minutes at a time. It is unplugged at night.
Her UVB bulb is an 18" reptiglo 10.0 tube that I changed yesterday. We live in Florida and when the weather is nice, I take her out on the back porch with me for 15-45 minutes of natural sunlight.
Her substrate is newspaper.
Her diet has been mostly Repti-Boost for months. She stopped eating greens years ago, and she has been having mouth problems that have prevented her from wanting to eat her normal food like butternut squash, crickets, and mealworms. Whenever she has lost her appetite, I have syringe fed her food and water. She has had many episodes over the years where I would syringe feed her for a few weeks and then she would return to eating her normal diet.
As of right now, I am not supplementing with any additional vitamins or calcium. She is eating between 6-12ml of reptiboost (the last few days she has been eating 12ml) mixed with water, a little bit of baby food and pumpkin and she has been drinking 3-5ml water from a syringe daily.
I have been spraying her enclosure regularly and giving her daily baths to try and keep her hydrated. The growth has prevented her from closing her mouth and she seems to appreciate the baths in addition to the water.
I thought that her problems started about 6 weeks ago, but when I started looking through pictures, she may have originally injured her mouth as early as late September. Quincy took a flying leap off of the couch and landed beard-first on the ground. When I took her outside a little later, I noticed a small swollen area at the back of her mouth when she was gaping. Because she has had intermittent swelling in areas of her mouth (her teeth aren't the best or the cleanest) throughout her life, we weren't really concerned. Usually, she'd get a swollen area, it would swell up, she would chew on it, and it would heal. All she needed was a little additional TLC for a couple of weeks, and she was fine.
This time, the swelling would get a little better, then she would chew on it vigorously and it would get a lot worse. It would heal up quite a bit, and she'd chew it up again. A couple of weeks ago, she irritated everything so much that it began to protrude from her mouth. We are poor, but we pulled the money together for a vet trip and took her earlier this week.
She was given a shot of Baytril. The vet thinks she has an infection, but it is 'secondary.' He kept saying that whatever it is, it is 'an unusual presentation.' While he didn't come right out and say it to me, he thinks the growth is cancer and not just irritated tissue from her chewing on her mouth. She has surgery scheduled for tomorrow.
I am having serious second thoughts. I want to do what is best for her, but my gut feeling is that surgery isn't the best option for her right now. Until this past week, she hadn't been eating as much as usual (most likely because she was bored with the repti-boost) and she had lost some weight. I started adding pumpkin and baby food to the repti-boost and she doubled the amount of food she has been consuming. Because they are going to be doing surgery on her mouth, I know she isn't going to want to eat. I really want to get her to a healthier weight before surgery. I feel like her chances at recovery would be better than her current weight.
Over the past few days, since the antibiotic shot and the addition of the pumpkin and baby food to her repti-boost, she has been so much more active. She zips around the house and zig-zags across the floor like I haven't seen her do in years. Aside from being in pain after eating, or after she chews on her mouth she seems her happy, cheeky self.
I guess more than anything, I am really freaked out because they want to operate on her two days before Christmas. We are too poor to afford a car. I will be alone, in the house, taking care of my baby post-surgery and if something goes wrong I will have no way to get her emergency treatment. If something goes wrong on Christmas, I don't think anyone will be able to help us at all and this terrifies me.
Right now, I am leaning towards rescheduling her surgery. My fiance feels the same way and he would prefer to be here when it happens. He wants to get her another antibiotic shot tomorrow and give her some more time to gain a little more weight. The vet specified that the shots are better for beardies because it bypasses their intestinal tract and allows them to keep their good gut bacteria. So far, her bowel movements have been completely normal.
Does anyone know if there is a way to perform a biopsy without taking the whole mass? Maybe just the bit that is protruding from her mouth and preventing it from closing?
Has anyone here had a beardie recover from oral surgery?
Has anyone had a beardie that was fully cured after removal of a tumor if the vet obtained clear margins?
Are there any anti-inflammatories that work in bearded dragons and don't damage liver/kidneys?
Could severe stomatitis in any way resemble an oral carcinoma in a bearded dragon?
Is there anything I can put on her mouth to protect the bit that is protruding? Part of the reason it keeps swelling is because it dries out.
If necessary, I took some pictures that I can put in another post.
I have written a couple of posts on reddit about Quincy, and Mary encouraged me to post here. I can link my reddit posts if anyone thinks it would be helpful.
Quincy is a 6 year old bearded dragon. She is my little buddy and we haven't spent a day apart since my fiance bought her.
She has surgery scheduled tomorrow to remove a growth from her mouth and I am really freaking out about the whole thing.
She lives in a tall and skinny 55 gal enclosure. We take her out and let her run around for exercise. She has two ceramic heat emitters on top of her enclosure and I have a heating pad underneath. I turn the heating pad on intermittently throughout the day and it stays on for about 45 minutes at a time. It is unplugged at night.
Her UVB bulb is an 18" reptiglo 10.0 tube that I changed yesterday. We live in Florida and when the weather is nice, I take her out on the back porch with me for 15-45 minutes of natural sunlight.
Her substrate is newspaper.
Her diet has been mostly Repti-Boost for months. She stopped eating greens years ago, and she has been having mouth problems that have prevented her from wanting to eat her normal food like butternut squash, crickets, and mealworms. Whenever she has lost her appetite, I have syringe fed her food and water. She has had many episodes over the years where I would syringe feed her for a few weeks and then she would return to eating her normal diet.
As of right now, I am not supplementing with any additional vitamins or calcium. She is eating between 6-12ml of reptiboost (the last few days she has been eating 12ml) mixed with water, a little bit of baby food and pumpkin and she has been drinking 3-5ml water from a syringe daily.
I have been spraying her enclosure regularly and giving her daily baths to try and keep her hydrated. The growth has prevented her from closing her mouth and she seems to appreciate the baths in addition to the water.
I thought that her problems started about 6 weeks ago, but when I started looking through pictures, she may have originally injured her mouth as early as late September. Quincy took a flying leap off of the couch and landed beard-first on the ground. When I took her outside a little later, I noticed a small swollen area at the back of her mouth when she was gaping. Because she has had intermittent swelling in areas of her mouth (her teeth aren't the best or the cleanest) throughout her life, we weren't really concerned. Usually, she'd get a swollen area, it would swell up, she would chew on it, and it would heal. All she needed was a little additional TLC for a couple of weeks, and she was fine.
This time, the swelling would get a little better, then she would chew on it vigorously and it would get a lot worse. It would heal up quite a bit, and she'd chew it up again. A couple of weeks ago, she irritated everything so much that it began to protrude from her mouth. We are poor, but we pulled the money together for a vet trip and took her earlier this week.
She was given a shot of Baytril. The vet thinks she has an infection, but it is 'secondary.' He kept saying that whatever it is, it is 'an unusual presentation.' While he didn't come right out and say it to me, he thinks the growth is cancer and not just irritated tissue from her chewing on her mouth. She has surgery scheduled for tomorrow.
I am having serious second thoughts. I want to do what is best for her, but my gut feeling is that surgery isn't the best option for her right now. Until this past week, she hadn't been eating as much as usual (most likely because she was bored with the repti-boost) and she had lost some weight. I started adding pumpkin and baby food to the repti-boost and she doubled the amount of food she has been consuming. Because they are going to be doing surgery on her mouth, I know she isn't going to want to eat. I really want to get her to a healthier weight before surgery. I feel like her chances at recovery would be better than her current weight.
Over the past few days, since the antibiotic shot and the addition of the pumpkin and baby food to her repti-boost, she has been so much more active. She zips around the house and zig-zags across the floor like I haven't seen her do in years. Aside from being in pain after eating, or after she chews on her mouth she seems her happy, cheeky self.
I guess more than anything, I am really freaked out because they want to operate on her two days before Christmas. We are too poor to afford a car. I will be alone, in the house, taking care of my baby post-surgery and if something goes wrong I will have no way to get her emergency treatment. If something goes wrong on Christmas, I don't think anyone will be able to help us at all and this terrifies me.
Right now, I am leaning towards rescheduling her surgery. My fiance feels the same way and he would prefer to be here when it happens. He wants to get her another antibiotic shot tomorrow and give her some more time to gain a little more weight. The vet specified that the shots are better for beardies because it bypasses their intestinal tract and allows them to keep their good gut bacteria. So far, her bowel movements have been completely normal.
Does anyone know if there is a way to perform a biopsy without taking the whole mass? Maybe just the bit that is protruding from her mouth and preventing it from closing?
Has anyone here had a beardie recover from oral surgery?
Has anyone had a beardie that was fully cured after removal of a tumor if the vet obtained clear margins?
Are there any anti-inflammatories that work in bearded dragons and don't damage liver/kidneys?
Could severe stomatitis in any way resemble an oral carcinoma in a bearded dragon?
Is there anything I can put on her mouth to protect the bit that is protruding? Part of the reason it keeps swelling is because it dries out.
If necessary, I took some pictures that I can put in another post.
I have written a couple of posts on reddit about Quincy, and Mary encouraged me to post here. I can link my reddit posts if anyone thinks it would be helpful.