Is My Rat Losing His Sight?

Question
Hello! I live in a small town without many rat resources and own a rat named Keith Moon. He is almost two years old. A few weeks ago he got very sick. He became tired and had all sorts of red, bleeding, oozing sores on himself and his tail. The vet said that it was a bacterial infection, possibly obtained from a rat that had died a few months prior whom I had adopted from a shelter, even though the two didn't share a cage. The vet gave us a chlorex scrub (nolvasan) to use on his tail and sores as well as Animax ointment to use on the sores. We also changed to a more healthy rat food that he's still getting used to, but eating regularly. Keith was better a few days later, and now after a few weeks, the sores are completely gone and he's hyper again.

However, although he has no sores, is eating and drinking well, and scales his cage walls like Spiderman, he seems to have trouble climbing on the two shelves and top of his igloo house. He doesn't seem to recognize where the edge is, has trouble gripping them, and is generally clumsy. He doesn't tilt his head at all, and is  steady when on flat ground or the bottom level of his cage, although he does hang his head off the edge of the shelves sometimes. He squints his eyes quite a lot, also. Keith used to recognize me and automatically run to me, but now when out he seems to be disorientated and won't come to me until I make a lot of noise.

In the end, I'm wondering if Keith may be losing his sight, since he exhibits no other symptoms of ear infections. However, I am not ruling that out. I also wonder if the medicines they gave him may have something to do with it, or if it could be anything else. If he's losing his sight, I'd like to move him to a longer cage without any shelves, or if anything else take him back to the vet to see if they might know anything (although they don't specialize in rats). Thanks for any help you can give me, I've used your website since my first rat five years ago. I look forward to your reply!

Answer
Sorry for the delay, I was out of town for a week and forgot to put myself on VACATION.

Anyhow, I am worried it may be something more neurological. Can he use his front paws to grasp objects such as food?

rats cant see anyhow, basically.  If they were human they would be considered legally blind having vision as bad as 20/600 and red or pink eyed rats even worse yet. However, they navigate wonderfully through the use of their very keen sense of smell and their fabuous whiskers too. They dont really even need to depend on vision to navigate. They travel (in the wild) in pitch dark underground tunnels and depend on vibration from their whiskers to let them know if they can fit through an area without getting stuck and of course their sense of smell is a big help too.