Recovery following Eye Removal

Question
QUESTION: Just to lead off: I will be calling my vet tomorrow, but I'm so worried right now and i can't find any answers so i'm trying all the different sites like this to see if i can find some info today. My almost 2-year-old female dumbo rat Olivia had to have an impromptu removal of her left eye on Friday 8/22. She's been doing fine other than the normal bleeding that first night, but still eating and drinking and moving around normally. Last night, she started becoming wobbly while walking and falling over some. I thought it might have to do with the pain med i had just given her, so i just let her go to sleep. Well, this morning she's still wobbly and falling and walking in circles. And she sits with me holding her for a very long time which she has never let me do in these past two years. She's more of the 'put me down and let me run and explore' type. I'm not sure if she's finally coming out of all the medicine and such and realizing that something is wrong on that side and so she's off-balance and confused since she keeps turning so she can see with her remaining eye. Or if she's got some neurological stuff going on as a result of the surgery. She did fall of something in my room which she has done before and been fine (she just gets up and crawls back up), but with the surgery, i don't know if it was really bad but she was wobbly some before. Sigh. I'm really worried because the vet assured me she'd be fine and wouldn't have any problems because i was really apprehensive because I had to put her cagemate Maui to sleep about 2 weeks ago (after she developed some neurological stuff suddenly which we thought was a middle ear infection but got worse in a week and turned out to be a tumor near her brain) so i'm really sad at the idea of losing both so close together. Thanks.


Santana, the one eyed   ANSWER: Your talking to the right person. Meet Santana, my one eyed wonder boy.

He had a horrible infection last year that lead to enucleation (surgical removal of the eye)
His recovery was somewhat like your girl, walking around in circles, kind of unsure of things because of the loss of vision in one eye. The good news is that rats do not depend on their vision for navigation and instead, they rely more on sound and sense of touch, using whiskers and so on.  Rats have lousy vision as it is which is why its not always super traumatic they lose an eye. I also have one rat that is blind in both eyes.  He lives alone now because of it in a small single story cage but he adjusted fine and is happy, or at least seems happy. He doesnt like to be put down on the floor or he will spin in circles and try to find me to get on my lap again. I do believe the surgery in your girl may even involve inflammation which could be putting pressure on the 8th cranial nerve, just like with otitis media (inner ear infection)What pain medication is the rat on?  
Why did she have to lose an eye? Infection?

I have a little story about Santana on my website:
http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/rathealthinformation.htm

any how please let me know the few things I asked, but when in doubt it wouldn't hurt to call the vet.  
Is they any odor to the surgical site at all?  Did the vet stitch it?




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Olivia   QUESTION: Thanks for replying! Here's Olivia the pirate rat!. She's on Buprenex with instructions to give 0.1 mls 2-3 times daily as needed for pain. I gave it to her friday night when she was crying and twice yesterday. I freaked out after the surgery because her face swelled so fast and I thought the sutures had come undone because she got this huge clotted scab- like thing on her face. Luckily, my vet has a shot clinic on saturdays so i could take her in. He said it wasn't open it was just like that from the swelling and the bleeding inside, but it still looks awful and I'm afraid to clean it. What is really upsetting for me, is that I'm moving to Boston on Tuesday for grad school and I can't take her with me which kills me that I did this to her and I have to leave her. Don't worry she's loved by my mom and my sister so she will be taken care of. It's just that my mom's coming with me for a week or so and my sister's very 'eww' when it comes to medical things so I'm just freaking out a tad. I'm just afraid she's going to get worse and that the wobbling was stroke related or something. I had taken her to the vet initially for scratching and noticed her eye looked kind of cloudy so I mentioned it to the vet and he gave me some medicine for it. Well, in a week this white protrusion formed on her eye and it was discolored red and he thought on friday that it was a rupture of some sort and that enucleation was best so that we didn't wake up one morning and find her eye ruptured out.   So did Santana ever stop being as wobbly (Olivia will also be walking and kind of flop over like her coordination is off)? Or is it kind of a learning process for them? I was thinking it was related to that because she probably still had the anesthesia and other meds in her system and didn't really understand what was going on. It was the fact it came on so fast that it worried me. Thank you so much for your help. I do feel better.

ANSWER: WOW!

.1 cc !!  Thats a helluva ton of buprenex.  SHe is tiny.  It should be used every 12 hours.  How much does she weigh about? I would cut back half on that dose and see if it helps he balance.
I give my huge 2 lb rats .1 cc and my medium rats .05 ccs twice a day.

Is she on antibiotics?

Santana looked gnarly for a while too. In fact now every month or two his eye socket puffs way out as if air is in it. Ifs actually fluid. Remember, whenever something in the body is removed, the body tries to fill it with something, and in this case, fluid fills up and drains out slowly when it gets too full. Its pretty hard to remove all the contents in the eye in such a small space. THe vet does what he or she can to remove the infection etc..but some tissue always remains in cases like this.

Let me know about the antibiotics and how much she weighs. She seems dainty.

Your other girl, Maui, died from a pituitary tumor it seems. Usually these nasty tumors start to grow when the female is around a year old if they are not spayed. Estrogen levels start kicking in and when they hit the end of estrus and go into menopause, the estrogen levels rise considerably and this in turn causes mammary tumors to start to grow and often, Pituitary adenomas grow fast at this stage and start to cause trouble.   It cannot be removed in rats and it is always fatal :(  
The symptoms mock inner ear infection but the rat also loses her ability to hold food or use her front paws and they start having trouble chewing and swallowing and cannot drink or eat and usually they need to be gently and humanely let go to forever sleep.

This occurs from 18 months and up. I hate female reproductive organs. Prevention consists of spaying females at a young age, around 3 to 5 months old to prevent this from even starting.

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QUESTION: I think on the last paperwork from the vet she weighed 260g. Don't they figure out the dose based on weight? I haven't given her any of the buprenex today though. I guess since it is a pain depressant it could affect her balance (I know I feel loopy when I take prescription pain meds). Since it had been a few days and she doesn't act like she's in pain (which I know they're good at hiding it), how do I know if I should give her any? She's not on antibiotics and the vet never mentioned any, which I kind of thought was odd.

And you're right about Maui. She had a lower abdominal tumor which grew over the summer, but that never bothered her. And then the ear thing started, which made her go downhill really quick.

Thanks!

Answer
Hmmm that is odd she should be on antibiotics absolutely....I cant imagine why she isnt....and she should have an ointment to put on the eye as well.
Is the vet you take her to see an exotic vet?


Also, yes its dosed by weight and your girl is not even a pound. My boys that weigh 800 grams dose at .1cc and my 450 gram girls dose at .05cc.
I would give her .05cc if she seems like she is hurting.  You can tell if she doesnt seem peppy or isnt eating or if she is digging at her eye and shaking her head etc..

SHe NEEDS antibiotics because of infection and if she had one before the surgery, wow....she just should get them for sure now. I would pretty much insist.