Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Re: Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Gillian Mostyn — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 20:53:24 GMT

[quote user="Anthony Dennison"]Welcome to my world... alot of our clients are like that![/quote]

as are a lot of exotics clients everywhere.....

Re: Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Anthony Dennison — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:54:36 GMT

[quote user="Gillian Mostyn"]oh, and no money, just for a change!!!!![/quote]

Welcome to my world... alot of our clients are like that! Thanks alot for the help

Re: Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Gillian Mostyn — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:16:21 GMT

Have spoken to the owner - black crispy prolapsed tongue....it don't sound good. They are bringing it down soon....

oh, and no money, just for a change!!!!!

Re: Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Anthony Dennison — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:21:59 GMT

Thanks Gillian! By the sounds of things this is the woman's first exotic pet, and she's just going off what she was told at the pet shop. It's good to know that it should be ok until the morning!

Re: Veiled Chameleon with a black tongue..?!

Gillian Mostyn — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:19:53 GMT

Hiya,

we'll be more than happy to see it in the morning - no probs! Helps pay the mortgage eh? We don't do our own on call but our OOH provider is pretty good at offering good advice until it gets to us...

The first thing to say is that there are VERY few true emergencies in reptiles. When owners say 'it was fine this morning but it is lying on itsside dying now' - they're either lying or they haven't actually looked at their beastie in many days!

With the vast majority of sick reptiles OOH it is absolutely appropriate to put them somewhere toasy warm, give fluids (s/c, iv or io - just get them in there!) if concious then give some vetark critical care formula po, put them in a warm bath for 30 mins or so and then wait till morning for starting diagnostics etc... Even with a true emergency, such as a prolapse, you would just need to add analgesia and lubricate the tissue and then you wouldn't need to panic to do any more until you have more advice. (Never do what one local vet did - pushed the prolapse back in before sending the patient to us, but then admit on the phone that you have no idea what the prolapsed tissue actually was!! In the end it pushed it back out again en route and it was a necrotic hemipene which was amputated uneventfully!)

Hard to say what is going on with your chameleon. Did she say whether the tongue was hanging out? How old is she? The husbandry sounds pretty poor TBH and it could be a multitude of issues. Would really need to see her (and her general body condition) to know what's going on.

If it survives until tomorrow, and makes it to us, I'll let you know!