Wednesday, April 25

Crazy!

Well as I reported quickly in my last post the weekend was lovely. Then Monday came and the craziness started. My husband was off which was good. We planned to clean the rat cage in the a.m. If you don't know we have two rats. Ophelia and Pandora. They are the sweetest little girls ever. In February we noticed a small growth on Ophelia. The vet said it was a mammary tumor. These tumors are very common in female rats. We were given a few options. One get surgery and have the tumor biopsied. The vet who explained this wanted an insane price. Or we could just leave it and watch her to see how things went. From what we understood, the tumor could grow large and the biggest problem would be that Ophelia would just have trouble getting around because of the size and location of the tumor. OK we decided to wait and see. She seemed to be doing well acting normal and everything though the tumor was getting quite large. About a month ago we discovered our other rat was developing a tumor. Sigh genetics it seemed was after them and it sucked. Still they acted normal and happy and healthy. Well last Friday Ophelia started bleeding from her tumor. When we looked at it, it looked like maybe she scratched it open or maybe her and her sister had a little fight. Well Monday when we went to clean the cage, there was a lot of blood and her wound had grown. We immediately took her to the vet. The diagnosis was the tumor had become necrotic and was dieing. She either needed surgery or to be put to sleep. After discussing all the options, and seeing two vets, Ophelia had emergency surgery on Monday afternoon. We had to leave her at the vet so we were sooooooooo relieved to get the call she was OK. I got to go pick her up yesterday. She is doing awesome! I hope if I ever have surgery I recover as fast. She is running around and climbing very well even though she has a 3 inch incision. It's as if she is finally free from the weight of the tumor and can zoom around now. We are soooo happy we got the surgery. Our biggest concern is we did not want her in pain or suffering. The surgery was expensive, not as expensive as the first vet had quoted, and since we could afford it with the budget, it was the right thing to do. Ophelia should recover fully. There are just a few unknowns. One: she will most likely grown more tumors. How many or how long it takes we just don't know. Two: what her life span will be. Average life span for a rat is about 2 years. Some have lived 4-6 years. Ophelia is 1 1/2 years so we are hoping she can at least live out her average expected life span. Because this was so scary, we are taking Pandora in for a consult and then surgery to remove her tumor before it gets so bad. Some people may think this is quite excessive to spend this much on two rats, but they are our pets. We love them, and they love us. So we feel why shouldn't we give them the best chances to have a happy normal life? OK I know this is a knitting blog, but I just had to blog about Ophelia and Pandora because they are so important to our family.

Other crazy news: Monday my daughters elementary school had to be evacuated because of a bomb threat. !!!!!!!!! My daughter has a medieval fest on Friday for which I need to make her dress. Yes I said make it. I don't even have the pattern cut out. I will get it done though. Sometimes working under pressure is good! And yes I have been knitting. Still the same socks but knitting none the less. Well now I should go cut out the pattern. Have a good day all.

6 comments:

Jenn said...

Aww, I'm glad that you were able to have the surgery done and that Ophelia is on the road to recovery!

I can't wait to see what kind of dress you make, you're such a crafty sewer! Did they catch who called in the bomb threat? I'm trying to remember if I saw it on the news or not.

Patricia said...

So happy to hear Ophelia's on the mend, you are a wonderful rat mommy! Please post some pics of the dress, would really like to see the finished result.

Sarah said...

I'm so glad to hear that Ophelia is doing better! I know how worried you were about her.

Did you get your STR for April yet? Mine came yesterday.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad your rat is doing better. We had 2 rats and both developed tumors as well. The vet said we could have had them spayed as babies for a tiny fraction of the money we spent on tumor surgery. Who knew? You better believe that if we ever get more rats, they will be spayed immediately! Give her a little fub behind the ears for me.

Anonymous said...

hi lady
candy

Holly said...

You are a knitting and sewing machine! I don't know how you do all that you do. And I'm glad the rats are doing well.