I'm not defending this vet here, but I'm just giving some clarifications based on my own experience. For such animals, whether they bite or not is actually quite a common question for the vet to ask. And for the not wearing of gloves to protect against bites, you'll need to be wearing quite a thick glove, and wearing such a thick glove makes it difficult for the vet to actually feel the animal. And asking the owner to hold the animal is also quite common, as such animals do not like being to have themselves held in such a manner and will often struggle. Thus it'll be better for somebody who's familiar with the animal to be the one holding them.

Anyways, onto the growth. It may be cancer, but it may just be a non cancerous growth. A non cancerous growth will be better news, but it'll still cause problems in the long run as it'll just get bigger and bigger. There's also a possibility for it to get infected too.

I've just had a hamster come out of surgery yesterday for such a lump on the right cheek, that also got infected.

The surgical procedure itself is quite simple, and the GA given is via gas. Basically getting the hamster to breath in the gas till they get knocked out, then an incision is made where the lump is and the lump taken out.

Whether the hamster will survive or not depends very much on the hamster. For mine, the hamster was very obviously losing weight and was having problems eating solid food, but I fed it the nutri smoothie mix (which is a good thing too that she likes to eat). But she's still rather active. If your hamster is acting weak, then chances r that it may not survive. The good news about mine is that the moment we brought her home and put her back into the tank, the first thing she did was to rush towards the bowl of smoothie. Eating is a good sign.

All in all, we've had 6 visits to the vet:
1) diagnose the lump. not sure what it is as yet. poked a needle into it to draw blood to see. found out there's infection. got given 2 antibiotic jabs
2) 2 more antibiotic jabs the next day
3) 2 more antibiotic jabs the next day. given oral antibiotics to feed to her, 1 drop per day
4) one week later, the infection is starting to mature and there's puss. poked a needle into the lump again, and try to squeeze out puss. continue with the daily oral antibiotics. lump size decreased slightly
5) one week later, lump size increasing again. determined that the lump is not just infection, but could be a growth. here's the decision time, on whether to do surgery or not
6) day after, surgery done, brought hamster back home. put her back into her tank after fully disinfecting the tank. feeding nutri smoothie mix as she's still not keen on solid food. continue with oral antibiotics.

need to bring back to the vet 2 days later for examination again.

edit: cost of surgery is RM100, at the Small Animals Vet over in Bandar Puteri Puchong (next to Mailboxes)

This post has been edited by fyire: Jan 24 2010, 10:52 AM

Well, currently its about 24 hours after bringing her back. The surgery was done yesterday in the morning. Her fur looks better already. Before this, it was matted and spiky, with obvious signs of fur thinning and loss. This morning, the fur's back to the smooth condition once again, although still thin in some areas.

Examined her closely again, and some parts of the lump is still there. This is to be expected in a way I guess, but at least the major part of it is already gone. The vet did also say that a second surgery may be needed for the remainder, but that's to be decided much later after she has recovered from the first. If the small leftover lump doesn't grow anymore, then its then best to just leave it as it is.

The tank or cage where you put the hamster in also needs to be changed slightly post operation. We removed everything from the cage, and instead of putting in the wood shavings, we just lined the bottom of the tank with paper towels, to be changed daily. Only thing in the tank now are the food bowl, a little plate with the smoothie mix, and a little container that she likes to hide in (this little container has to be disinfected on a daily basis too). In other words, keep the tank as simple as possible, so its easy to clean up on a daily basis, as its very important to prevent any infection of the surgery wound.

Examine the surgery wound regularly too, and if its bleeding, try to clean up using cotton balls soaked in warm water (boil the water, then wait for it to cool down).

She's a winter white (pearl). Currently well enough to start running around the tank away from me when I have to take her out to feed her the antibiotics. Appetite seems to be alright, although still prefer the smoothie mix rather than solid food that she still picks at.

Let me know how your hamster is doing, and/or if she needs to go for surgery or not. I can pass u the contact of the vet that we went to over in Bandar Puteri Puchong.

Just brought the hamster (Eenie) back to the vet yesterday for the post surgery checkup. She seems to be doing ok, and improving. Such surgery wounds tends to take just 3 days to heal, but since there's infection in the area as well (from before the surgery), it may take longer. But the wound itself is already closed up properly, but there's some ugly looking scabs still stuck there still. Leaving those scabs alone for the time being.

Still some 'pimple' looking little bumps on her skin where the left over lumps are at, most likely puss accumulating from the previous infection. Decided not to touch those as yet as its too close to where the surgery wound is at. Contrary to most beliefs, such signs of puss can actually be a good sign, when it comes to a bad infection, as it shows that the body is fighting off the infection and isolating away the infected cells. Normally has to be lanced and removed, but this has to wait a bit in Eenie's case.

Next trip to the vet will be in 7-10 days, or if any of the 'pimples' breaks (on its own or from her own pawing) for an antibiotic jab (just in case she eats any of the puss while cleaning herself) and a cleanup of the area.

Hamster tumor update:

Today's the 8th visit to the vet, 10 days after the surgery to remove the tumor from the right cheek.

She's getting very itchy fingers/paws, and had scratched off all the scabs. Quite a big scare there, as the peeling off of the scab like that caused some bleeding as well, but the surgery wound is already closed. Just some raw skin exposed still where the scab was scratched off.

The newer lump under the chin that had been slowly growing in size after the surgery shrunk down too, which is an indication that its filled with puss rather than being a new growth. Needless to say, there's another wound over there after she had scratched off the scab there too, but the puss had drained out.

All that was done at the vet today was just basic cleanup of the wound, of which we'll continue to do on our on on a daily basis till the skin there has healed properly.

She's started eating solid foods again, but will continue to provide the nutrie smoothie mix. Mixing in some sugar glider protein supplement into the food as well to help her gain weight again.

We went over to the Pusat Perubatan Veterinar Small Animals, over at Bandar Puteri Puchong, next to Mailboxes

hmm.. not necessarily. hair loss in animals is a general sign of health problems. In fact, the fur condition is kinda a sign of the overall health too. Eenie (the hamster that went through surgery) had pretty bad fur when the tumor (which was also infected. refer to my previous posts in this thread for further details) was at its worse before the surgery, her fur was very very thin, and matted.

The day after the surgery, her fur was back to being smooth again, but still thin, and its slowly growing back thicker. Kinda a sign of recovery here as well (along with the appetite coming back too).

Thus, it can be something else that's the problem actually, where the fur loss is one of the signs.

hamsters are nocturnal animals. ie. awake during the dark and asleep during day time. i guess you can try to put your hamster cage in a dark place during the day and in a place with light during the night and see if u can get any differences or not?

Mine tends to come rushing out the moment we drop food into the food bowl. But they also like to just run and hide the moment we try to catch them. The running away and hiding may not be due to them wanting to sleep, but could just be a normal reaction of small animals to run away when there's something big and scary wanting to pick them up.

---

Added on February 11, 2010, 7:58 pmGood chance of getting bitten too if the hamster is in a bad mood

This post has been edited by fyire: Feb 11 2010, 07:58 PM

I won't exactly use the word wild on them, as they almost never bite at all. Cowardly hyperactive is more like it