dash_splamage
New member
Hi there, this will be my first time posting to these excellent forums for corn snakes, and I thank those that created this place for all of the useful information I have read here.
I have had Mashie about three weeks after he was hatched in July 2001. I bought him from a reptile-only pet store and was told that he was amelanistic red albino but I didn't really remember, the only thing I recall was getting him in my hands to look at and saying, "I'll take him." I was also told to get the Corn Snake Manual by Bill and Kathy Love which I did and refer to when I have a question. All in all he's been a good little snake to me.
This is Mashie:
I don't know when I first noticed a bulge or a lump, but his second half has been rather thick for a long while. I thought it seemed to be normal for corn snakes, but since this is the only one that I have ever known, I was only presuming this to be the case.
This is a photo of me holding him back in or around June 2004:
And this is from around December 2004:
Those photos look normal so far as I can tell. At any rate, I did begin to notice at some point that his back third was getting lumpy when I would take him out and feed him. Rarely would he regurge and from what I read, this was not unusual to see it happen a great once in a while. I would typically let him rest and feed him in a week, and he'd gobble the mouse (he's eaten exclusively frozen) right up. Probably in 2005, the lumps became more pronounced about 8 to 12 inches up from the vent.
Here are the photos of his tail from 2006.
February 22:
September 2:
And for perspective, this is him more stretched out.
In August he regurged three times consecutively, and from what I was reading on the forums I approached the third feeding after waiting a week from his second regurge. He was definitely interested in the mouse, so I sense that he is hungry but he did not appear to be able to keep the mouse down. Hence a trip to the vets on Friday along with a stool sample. The results on the stool sample turned up nothing.
The vet then pushed down on several of the bulges or lumps and said that they felt like air trapped under the skin. I hadn't made that connection, but sure enough when you press down the skin is springy, not like a solid mass below the surface. He then prepped up a lump and inserted a needle to draw a sample just in case it was really fluid under the skin. He drew the plunger but nothing came out and the barrel of the syringe was empty. He had said that there are cases in other snakes where a rupture occurs possibly in the lungs and gas just makes its way under the skin and backwards but that he wasn't familiar with corn snakes having this. His theory was that this might add to internal pressure on the rest of the organs, and it might be the cause of the regurgitation.
At any rate, the vet gave him an antibiotic injection (Mashie showed off just how strong he is by bending the needle while the vet gave him the injection) and he has three more coming at 72 hour intervals. I am trying to be optimistic that these will help him, but I felt obliged to toss this one out there given the number of other threads related to lumps, bumps, and bulges in corns. I'll be happy to post the end results too.
Thanks all!
I have had Mashie about three weeks after he was hatched in July 2001. I bought him from a reptile-only pet store and was told that he was amelanistic red albino but I didn't really remember, the only thing I recall was getting him in my hands to look at and saying, "I'll take him." I was also told to get the Corn Snake Manual by Bill and Kathy Love which I did and refer to when I have a question. All in all he's been a good little snake to me.
This is Mashie:
I don't know when I first noticed a bulge or a lump, but his second half has been rather thick for a long while. I thought it seemed to be normal for corn snakes, but since this is the only one that I have ever known, I was only presuming this to be the case.
This is a photo of me holding him back in or around June 2004:
And this is from around December 2004:
Those photos look normal so far as I can tell. At any rate, I did begin to notice at some point that his back third was getting lumpy when I would take him out and feed him. Rarely would he regurge and from what I read, this was not unusual to see it happen a great once in a while. I would typically let him rest and feed him in a week, and he'd gobble the mouse (he's eaten exclusively frozen) right up. Probably in 2005, the lumps became more pronounced about 8 to 12 inches up from the vent.
Here are the photos of his tail from 2006.
February 22:
September 2:
And for perspective, this is him more stretched out.
In August he regurged three times consecutively, and from what I was reading on the forums I approached the third feeding after waiting a week from his second regurge. He was definitely interested in the mouse, so I sense that he is hungry but he did not appear to be able to keep the mouse down. Hence a trip to the vets on Friday along with a stool sample. The results on the stool sample turned up nothing.
The vet then pushed down on several of the bulges or lumps and said that they felt like air trapped under the skin. I hadn't made that connection, but sure enough when you press down the skin is springy, not like a solid mass below the surface. He then prepped up a lump and inserted a needle to draw a sample just in case it was really fluid under the skin. He drew the plunger but nothing came out and the barrel of the syringe was empty. He had said that there are cases in other snakes where a rupture occurs possibly in the lungs and gas just makes its way under the skin and backwards but that he wasn't familiar with corn snakes having this. His theory was that this might add to internal pressure on the rest of the organs, and it might be the cause of the regurgitation.
At any rate, the vet gave him an antibiotic injection (Mashie showed off just how strong he is by bending the needle while the vet gave him the injection) and he has three more coming at 72 hour intervals. I am trying to be optimistic that these will help him, but I felt obliged to toss this one out there given the number of other threads related to lumps, bumps, and bulges in corns. I'll be happy to post the end results too.
Thanks all!
