As of last Thursday, all of my girls have implants. Here's a quick run down of each one individually:
Sophie was the first to get the implant (ironically she was the first I was going to have spayed because she was so chubby and thus more likely to get a lump) back in May (at 19 months) for a small lump in her armpit. At first I thought it was shrinking, but then I realized it was sometimes easier to feel than others because of Sophie's... erm... baby fat. The tumour grew slowly, and then one day I felt a small hard lump on her collarbone. I didn't do anything right away, hoping it was an abscess, but it continued to grow despite the fact she was on Doxy and Batryl for the sniffles. Being the worry wart that I am, we went to the vet and scheduled a removal for both, although the original one had branched out a bit and took too long to remove, so it was the only one removed in July. Six weeks later, with the lump on the collar bone still growing, I had her scheduled for surgery again, with her buddy Butterscotch (later learned that was not the best plan) but when the vet cut into her, he discovered it was an abscess (that continued to grow despite 2 months of antibiotics). She recovered really well from both procedures and has no other lumps to date (the is an enlarged lymph-node in her other armpit, but it has stayed unchanged for months now) and is more active and outgoing than ever.
Butterscotch's lump popped up less than two weeks after Sophie's, also in her armpit. She was approximately 17-18 months) It stayed the same for three months after the implant, but after Sophie's first surgery it started to grow slowly so I opted to have it removed when Sophie had her abscess *sigh* removed. Thinking back now, that was more of an emotional response on my part, it probably wasn't necessary, but she's fully recovered now (has some scar tissue because Sophie chewed on her sutures in post-op recovery) and has no other lumps either.
Both Butterscotch's and Sophie's tumours were no bigger than a seedless grape.
Ava's implant was done sometime in June (very rough age estimate was 18 months) , after I found a huge bubble (it was not an abscess, but a really big, squishy lump) on her collarbone/ribcage area. That lump has shrunk to an almost unnoticeable size, still very loosely packed and squishy, and she also has no other lumps that I know of... although she really doesn't like when I try to check her over. I was hoping that the implant would calm her down, that maybe the cause of some of her aggression was hormones, but that doesn't seem to have happened.
Annabelle, the youngest in my cage (19 months), would have been surgically spayed already as she is turning out to be quite the squish, but she has been on antibiotics for months, and can't quite finish kicking her respiratory infection so no surgery for her. For a week I kept on thinking I saw a bump on her side, but could not find the lump right away. When I did find it last week I booked her for an implant and brought Oreo along in hopes I could convince the vet to get her implanted as well before she developed a lump. Annabelle's lump is about the size of a lima bean and is halfway between the bottom of her rib cage and her hips. It reminds me of Lizzie's tumour, that was attached to her abdominal wall. She hasn't even finished growing her hair back, but I am pretty hopeful her's will be as successful as the others' were.
Oreo got implanted along with Annabelle as this vet didn't have an issue doing the procedure as a prophylactic, so hopefully she won't develop a tumour at all. She is almost 21 months old now (Butterscotch's sister) and still as skinny as ever so that she can still squeeze under my closet door.
As an aside, there was another female in this colony whom I lost to a suspected pituitary tumour in August. Grace was Sophie's sister (we think) and was fairly healthy save for mild sniffles most of her life until she started acting off. I tried pain meds to see if that was the cause of her personality change, but when they didn't help (she was on lifetime abs) we went to the vet and ruled out heart disease so we put her on Prednisone to see if it was neurological. The Pred did help for about a week, but Grace just gave up one day and we had to say goodbye. Grace was intact and did not have an implant, and in a check-up 2 days before she passed we found a lump about a centimetre above her vaginal opening which we also suspect was a mammary tumour.
We didn't do anything about Grace's lump as we knew she did not have much time left, but that makes 5/6 (female) rats in my current colony that have developed mammary tumours before the age of 20 months and none of the ones who were implanted have developed new ones. I'll have a better idea of how effective they are as more time goes on, but despite the cost, the more time that passes, the more I am inclined to think that implants are often a better alternative to surgery. In my experience, the immune systems of rats who have surgery never recover to quite 100% and that can influence their lifespan. That being said, my vet did add a little tidbit to his pre-procedure "These are the Risks" speech about the possibility of the patient picking at the insertion site (it really is not an incision) and removing the implant - he had a ferret do just that the previous week. So far so good here though! *knocks on wood*
