These photos are quite large as I wanted to include as much detail as possible, so please allow them to load fully.

First of all, Teena had already been checked out by the vet and was deemed fit for surgery. It's important to make sure your rat's breathing is ok for the anaesthetic.

The vet scrubs up for good hygiene and wears a green overall.

Then Teena was placed inside the knock-down box for anaesthetic. This is a much kinder way of anaesthetising small animals as it's less stressful than using a mask.

Next Teena has the anaesthetic mask placed over her face and is arranged on the operating table for shaving.

The area of the tumour is shaved with clippers similar to those used by human hairdressers, and some of the surrounding area is shaved to make sure it's clean and free of debris that could get into the wound.

Once the area is shaved, it's cleaned with a solution of diluted hibiscrub, to clear the area of bacteria.

And here she is ready for surgery. you can clearly see the location of the tumour in her groin. One of the more common sites for tumours to develop.

Teena is lying on a towel, under which is a beanbag which had been heated before surgery. Keeping the animal warm throughout the surgery, especially small animals, is exceptionally important as they lose a lot of body heat.

These are the tools of the vet's trade, the surgical equipment is sealed within a sterile bag, and is wrapped in the green fabric called a surgical drape, so every time you have  perfectly clean and sterile equipment.

Here the vet makes the incision, much smaller than the tumour itself, but large enough to get the tumour through.

The tumour is then gently squeezed through the incision and taken out of the body.

Here we have the tumour once separated from other membranes which were holding it inside the body, the remaining 'string' attached is the tumour's blood supply. Normally on tumours such as this, with good blood supplies, Mycoplex Coriolus is very effective. In Teena's case it slowed the growth right down to a crawl.

The vet ties off the blood supply, snips it away, and places the small remainder back into the body cavity before beginning to stitch the rat back up. In some cases, if the blood supply is not tied off securely, occasionally it can cause a hematoma to develop, post-op, where the cavity which held the tumour fills with blood seeping from somewhere.These are easily dealt with by applying a pressure dressing to the area, and should never be drained.

Despite what a lot of people think, suturing is not done by just holding the needle and thread and stitching as you would clothing, the needle is curved in shape and already threaded, taken from a sealed package. The needle is never touched by the hands, it's put through the skin with the scissor-like instrument you see, called a clamp, while the wound is being held closed by the tweezer-like instrument, called a hemostat.

A closer look at suturing.

In this shot you can see that Teena is being given an injection of yellow liquid, this is called Duphalyte and is a rehydration formula, it's very important that the animal stays well hydrated during surgery. This is given slowly beneath the skin.

The anaesthetic was already turned off at this point, as the surgery was finished. Isofluorane gas usually takes a little while to get out of the system, so despite the absence of the anaesthetic, it was still in her system and she was still asleep and felt nothing until everything was finished. In some cases the animal is given oxygen to help them awaken.

She was taken out of the room briefly where the area was sprayed with blue terramycin spray, then she was closely monitored while she awoke.  Within half an hour of the surgery, Teena was awake as though nothing had happened, moving around in her carrier.

The whole procedure took about 15 minutes from start to finish and many people were amazed at the lack of gore or blood.

This was a typical tumour removal surgery and we expect Teena to make a full recovery very quickly.

I recommend that rats who have undergone tumour removal surgery are then given a maintenance dose of Mycoplex Coriolus, with or without Maxigen shark cartilage to prevent regrowth. Details of doseages and where to buy are included in my tumour document which can be found here.