post-operative difficulties

Question
a week ago i brought my 3 year old rat, philly, into the vet to have what i thought was a mammary tumour removed.  it turned out it was an abscess, but was drained and removed successfully.  now, a week later after the skin has pretty much healed up, philly has a big bruise along the length of where the incision was made, and she's really limp and won't eat or drink unless i do it for her.  her eyes have been secreting a lot of tha red gunk lately and she seems to be in a lot of pain. also she's discharging mucous (no blood) from her vagina, which i thought was a response to the antibiotics, but she finished her medicine a while ago, and she's still goopy.  i guess, i'm not sure if she's just having a lot of trouble recovering from the surgery because of her age, or if something else is going on that i should bring her to the vet for; and i'd like your opinion.  thank you.

Answer
HI Tori

Didn't the vet realize the difference between the tumor and abscess? A simple aspiration would have told the entire story as to what the lump was.
If your rat was otherwise healthy, age has no bearing on how she will react to surgery.  I have had rats that old and older have mammary tumors removed (several at a time) and recovered well.

Sounds to me she has an infection going on, possibly systemic. She needs to be seen and put on aggressive antibiotics and have her incision cleaned out too to be sure its not infected as well.Having an abscess lanced surgical can sometimes cause the infection to spread if the vet is not real skilled at surgery. Hopefully your vet was.
Also, when rats are put under anesthesia, it should be isoflurane or sevoflurane and they wake up very fast from both. What makes them woozy is the strong narcotic pain medication that is used and that can take a few good hours to wear off, but not a week.
You need to get her hydrated and off to the vet as soon as you can.

Hope she is ok. Keep me posted please!