Lump on my Bairds ratsnake *updated with surgery pictures!*

Well today is the day! Wish my boy luck on his surgery. The lump is bigger now so hopefully it will go smoothly. I'm not normally worried about much but I am feeling a little anxious.

Good luck, Cain!

Good Luck Cain!

Good luck big guy!!!

So it turned out to be two lumps. And they weren't abscesses afterall. They were balls of old dried blood (what he described as hematoma-like). The vet seemed perplexed. Hes not really sure if its a trauma of some sort or something worse. He had something similar happen to one of his snakes, only the lumps were near the cloaca. Eventually the snake died several weeks later of a heart condition. He is not sure if thats what is going on here but hes worried enough that hes keeping him overnight.

He ended up accessing the lumps through his mouth, which he did because he thought they were abscesses and would be easy to care for post-op. But, he had to cut through a couple blood vessels and now theres an issue with blood leaking out of the incision sites. So when I get him tomorrow morning, they are going to show me whats going on and give me some injectable antibiotics for him. Hes going to be off food for at least 4 weeks until he has a recheck.

Not what I was expecting, but its a good thing I brought him in and I still am very confident in my choice of vets. Hopefully the two masses were brought upon by trauma of some sort and not something worse. The vet is "hopefully optimistic" about him. So we'll see.

Oh Angela, I hope the big boy comes out the other side of this with flying colors.

Oh poor guy Keep us posted.

Thanks... I really hope he pulls through. He's my favorite one and it would suck to lose another after the loss of Crue. IMO, hes the calmest and most special one of my group. And being extremely handsome helps .

So I picked up my boy this morning from the vets. Overall he looks pretty good, but has lost control of his tongue. Vet isnt sure if its from the pain meds or nerves were damaged. But I will be keeping an eye on it.

It took me all day, but I finally got the temps right for his hospital cage. I have to jack up the heat for greater antibiotic uptake and distribution. Hes currently at 94* and very happy it seems, since my house has been in the 60s. I have to keep him like this for 3 weeks until his follow up appointment.

I was also sent home with 4 doses of antibiotics to be given via IM injection every 3 days. The drug is called Fortaz, which I had never heard of before. But I have to keep it frozen until use otherwise it only lasts a few days reconstituted.

Dr. Barten was great. He gave me a summary of what they did and found during the surgery.

"The incisions were made inside the mouth rather than through the skin. The main mass proved to be a thin-walled hematoma-like structure; it was hollow and full of old, dark blood. It may have been attached to a blood vessel as there was some bleeding during removal. A second, similar, smaller mass was found on the right side further back in the throat and also was removed. It also was thin walled and involved some bleeding during removal.

The masses appeared to be hematomas and could be secondary to trauma or infection. I am concerned that removing a mass results in a hole that could collect blood that seeps after surgery so watching for recurrence of the swelling is important. There is a chance that these hematomas could result from infection elsewhere in the body (liver, heart, kidney) and could recur at the same site or somewhere else. I am concerned about the blood supply and nerve function to the lower jaws, and while they need to be monitored, they should be OK."

In addition to that workup, he took pictures! And not only that, he has already emailed them to me. He took only a couple shots of the inside of his mouth of the mass, of it opened up, then sutured.

First, he took a nice profile shot of Cain.




Next, a quick shot of the inside of the mouth. You can see the dark purple section which is the mass.




Then he lances it and you can see around the blood (which is the blood vessel that ran through the mass) the very dark old blood in the middle, which he removed.




Here is the shot after he sutured it up using dissolvable stitches. Now, you can see the second, smaller mass behind that on the other side of the throat, which he also removed but did not take any pictures of.





Hopefully Cain recovers quickly! Dr. Barten says in 20 years of treating reptiles, he has never seen anything present like this before. Hopefully its just trauma of some sort instead of being indicative of something more serious...

Awwww I sure do hope he recovers well!