Here we have my lovely Mr Jingles, who developed a lump on the side of his face  (which you can only just see here)a month before Christmas 2002, which was wrongly diagnosed by my previous vet as being an inoperable tumour that would eventually kill him. I took him to a new vet for a second opinion, and after surgery, it was found out to be nothing more than an abscess.

Here is the abscess next to a 10 pence coin for scale. As you can see, it grew to quite a size, and actually killed the skin outside of it due to the pressure, so a portion of the skin had to be taken away with it. It had been growing silently inside his ear without symptom for quite some time, and the inner ear had to be taken away with it, but he never seemed to miss it. If the lump wasn't taken away, he probably wouldn't have seen that Christmas, but as it was, he was with me until the following July, and died of natural causes.

Anthony's abscess

Here's a very good picture of an abscess, this was a 15 month old buck who'd recently been castrated, but post operative antibiotics were not prescribed, and so this abscess formed. It was full of foul smelling pus which would have been drained to relieve pressure. Baytril was later given and to the best of my knowledge, he made a full recovery.

Trio's Abscess

One evening, I found an abscess on the abdomen of my lovely buck, Trio. I decided to take him in to see my vet, who quickly diagnosed that due to it's location, could quickly become serious, so the abscess was opened and cleaned out under anaesthetic.

This is Trio asleep, the abscess is the small dark area you can see in front of the penile sheath. (Yes, Trio was born with only three legs)

Light abdominal palpation made this horrible pus come from beneath his penile sheath, it was coming from the actual abscess via a vent in the penile sheath, and wasn't coming from the penis.

(Trio had also been castrated which is why the area looks red. Photos of the castration can be seen on the Misc page.)

This is the abscess once opened, drained and cleaned. It's now fully healed.

Huggy's abscess

Here we have Huggy, brother of Starsky and Hutch. He developed a lump on his back just after he moved into a cage with other bucks, so I suspect he was bitten.

Here is how the lump looked once it had burst.

The pus from inside had dried to form a crust.

I then cleaned it myself and it looked like this.

You can see here that it had created a hole in the flesh, this was because the filling was extremely thick, like cheese, and had forced the tissue to grow around it. In the very centre was some filling that wouldn't come out, causing the abscess to re-form, so Huggy had to be taken in to my vet and have the whole thing shelled out and stitched back up.

The lump had turned out to be a granuloma, which is a benign lump of dead cells.

His fur is blue because of the Terramycin spray he had, post-op. He's perfectly healed up now, his cagemates took his stitches out, and his fur still has a slight blue tinge to it due to the spray.

Trio's Blepharospasm

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my three-legged buck, Trio, had something wrong with his eye. On closer inspection I found that his conjunctiva was protruding from under his eye.

I took him to my vet who told me that the symptom name was Blepharospasm, which is basically a twitch of the conjunctiva, in Trio's case it had protruded due to infection, so he had a shot of antibiotics and steroidal eyedrops. That night, the blepharospasm had receded and everything looked great.

Just over a week later, Trio developed a swelling below the eye.

Bear in mind that this is Trio's right eye, the same side where his front paw is missing, so he's been unable to wash his face that side.

Any swellings in this kind of position, in such close proximity to the eye, should never be drained or lanced by anyone other than a vet, as you're dealing with a very delicate area, it's too close to the eye, and accidents could happen unless the rat was anaesthetised, plus you may be dealing with a tooth root abscess which should only ever be treated by a vet.

I took him back to my vet, and the swelling was diagnosed as an abscess, and it was lanced under anaesthetic. The infection was due to a blocked tear duct. Most of the abscess was on the inside, like an iceberg, only a small portion of the swelling was visible from outside, and there was a great deal of pus inside.

It was cleaned and flushed, and left open.

This is Trio after I'd got him home, I'd just washed his eye, which is why his face is so wet, and he looks so miserable.

Trio is now having Terramycin twice a day and I'm opening and cleaning the abscess site twice a day with plain, previously boiled warm water. Saline should never be used anywhere close to the eyes.

As you can see, this is how his scar looks before I clean it, the abscess begins to clog up with dried pus, which has to come off, and be cleaned out.

Once it's been cleaned out, the abscess needs to stay open, so any scabs should be gently taken off. Slowly but surely, Trio's eye will get better, it's looking better every day, with less and less swelling.