victoria
Well-Known Member
Oreo is 30 months old and has been very healthy most of her life with me. I got her implanted in November but she developed two tumours very soon afterward. I left them, figuring they would grow slowly but they grew very quickly and after Sophie passed I finally booked her in to have them removed. They were very big at the time (almost the size of ping pong balls), the surgery was longer than expected, and she had me scared the first few days after surgery, but she did fully recover and is back to normal. Both lumps had necrotized and abscessed on the inside but were well encapsulated.
At first it looked like there was some swelling/bruising in the area where the inguinal tumour was, then it became a bit lumpy, now it's clearly a lump. I took her in for a post-op check-up when it was just lumpy but the vet couldn't tell if it was a new tumour, a cluster of small abscesses, or scar tissue. I'm pretty sure it's a tumour now, it's not hard enough to be an abscess and it's growing so not scar tissue. Last night I found another strange lump on he shoulder/just beneath her shoulder blade. It almost feels like a wart, a growth at the skin level, not underneath it.
She's also had an URI for a few weeks now, we are still tweaking the meds to find the right ones, but it's not serious and it's not getting worse.
What's got me concerned though is that her belly is growing rounder and rounder by the day. (I'll upload and add a better pic later.) She always gained weight oddly, but it seems like her belly is getting rounder and rounder. I poked and prodded at her abdomen and can't feel any internal lumps, but I may not be doing it hard enough because I'm afraid of hurting her. Before the surgery, she weighed 480 g and was down to 420 g two days afterward. Now she is up to 447 g, still making her the smallest in my old crew. She's also still super active, behaves more like a 1 year old than a 2.5 year old.
Is her belly something I should worry about or can I wait and see what happens?
Here are some pics...
This is Oreo about 2 weeks before her surgery. They grew quite a bit more before the surgery and it's not a great pic but she's a difficult rat to get to stay still:
Here she is at the beginning of May:
and a month later:
It's hard to see in those pics, but I literally check her over everyday because she always looks like she has a lump
I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid or if this is normal for some rats.
At first it looked like there was some swelling/bruising in the area where the inguinal tumour was, then it became a bit lumpy, now it's clearly a lump. I took her in for a post-op check-up when it was just lumpy but the vet couldn't tell if it was a new tumour, a cluster of small abscesses, or scar tissue. I'm pretty sure it's a tumour now, it's not hard enough to be an abscess and it's growing so not scar tissue. Last night I found another strange lump on he shoulder/just beneath her shoulder blade. It almost feels like a wart, a growth at the skin level, not underneath it.
She's also had an URI for a few weeks now, we are still tweaking the meds to find the right ones, but it's not serious and it's not getting worse.
What's got me concerned though is that her belly is growing rounder and rounder by the day. (I'll upload and add a better pic later.) She always gained weight oddly, but it seems like her belly is getting rounder and rounder. I poked and prodded at her abdomen and can't feel any internal lumps, but I may not be doing it hard enough because I'm afraid of hurting her. Before the surgery, she weighed 480 g and was down to 420 g two days afterward. Now she is up to 447 g, still making her the smallest in my old crew. She's also still super active, behaves more like a 1 year old than a 2.5 year old.
Is her belly something I should worry about or can I wait and see what happens?
Here are some pics...
This is Oreo about 2 weeks before her surgery. They grew quite a bit more before the surgery and it's not a great pic but she's a difficult rat to get to stay still:
Here she is at the beginning of May:
and a month later:
It's hard to see in those pics, but I literally check her over everyday because she always looks like she has a lump
I'm not sure if I'm being paranoid or if this is normal for some rats.
