Strokes,blindness, tumors and respritory infections

Question
QUESTION: Hi

I recently had to take my rat to the vet with a respiratory infection. she was prescribed antibiotics and i was told to give her them for a week. unfortunately she didn't seem to get better and lost allot of weight. i had also noticed a fair sized lump on her side which the vet said was either a hematoma, or a mammary tumor. i had red that rats in later life are prone to these type of things.

even more unfortunately the infection did not get better and i last night i had to take her to the emergency vet as she was very limp and shaky when she was walking. the vet had said that she may have suffered a stroke and that was what was wrong with her. he said that the only option left as she still had the infection was to have her put down which we agreed was the best course. how ever now that i have been researching some,e info online i am now wondering if that was the best course of action.

could you please advise if i made the right choice?

thank you

Ian

ANSWER:   Making the decision to end an animal's suffering is never an easy one.  It certainly does seem that your rat was suffering, and if the antibiotics didn't help her respiratory infection, she had a tumor (which would have caused much more complications even if she had gotten better), and she had a stroke, there really isn't any coming back from that.  I do believe you did the right thing by ending her suffering; she probably would not have gotten better even with treatment.

 If it had just been one of those illnesses instead of three at once, she would have had a better chance for recovery, but with a respiratory infection, tumor, and stroke the poor thing just got hit with so many things at once she probably wouldn't have recovered.  I'm also assuming that she was fairly old as well, in which case it makes treatment much more difficult and even if she pulled through she may not have had very much time left anyways.

 Well I'm very sorry to hear about your rat, but I am glad you sought veterinary care for her when so many others wouldn't have done the same.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: would it be ok to introduce a new rat to the cage to keep my other rat company?

Answer
 If your remaining rat is younger than two years and still in good health it would be a good idea to introduce a new rat, but wait a few weeks for her to grieve for her lost friend.  If the rat is older, she may not want a younger rat that has much more energy than she does and it may stress her out.

 I would recommend getting two babies from the same litter, that way if they don't get along with your old rat then they can live together in a separate cage.