Sunday, April 09, 2006
The Franken-Eye
Tink's normal eyes
I went up to visit Clara in San Francisco for about 10 days. I was supposed to relax, hang out, and get lots of job applications done. Unfortunately, there was a most tragic turn of events. I had brought Tink, in her aquarium, and a big tub of toys and food up with me. Six days into it, I noticed that Tink seemed to be having trouble closing her right eye. I showed it to Clara, and she thought we should at least put something on it, to keep it moist. She told me how when they operated on mice, they had to put vaseline on their eyes because the mice wouldn't close their eyes when they were under anesthesia. I hunted online for dwarf hamsters and eye trouble, and found this article on Sputnik and Kosmo, two dwarfs who had glaucoma. It also mentioned something about putting ointment on the eyes, so they wouldn't dry out. So Clara and I dabbed a little Neosporin on Tink's eye, and went to bed.
(Note: This was not a good idea, I later learned. Neosporin shouldn't be put into anyone's eye, human or animal. Vaseline isn't great, but it's still better than Neosporin. I read on a vet site about prolapsed eyes in dogs, that one could flush the eye with saline, and then use KY jelly. That makes more sense, as KY jelly is water-based. But, better yet, is ointment from the store especially formulated for eyes. We couldn't have gotten it that night, as all the stores were already closed, but we should've used Vaseline rather than Neosporin. Sigh. I am always learning.)
The Franken-Eye
The next day, Tink looked AWFUL. She had rubbed the Neosporin all over herself while grooming, which flattened her hair and made her look half her size. This in turn made her eye look all the bigger, and scarier. I called her vet in LA, and she said it was urgent for Tink to see a vet, that there might be some sort of infection behind her eye that was swelling and pushing the eye out. So I made an appointment for that evening with an unknown vet up in San Francisco.
The place was very nice, with clean, smart little appointment rooms equipped with metal tables. All the literature and pictures on the walls were about cats and dogs. Ah, the usual pet hospital scenario.
I started to get uneasy -- I had seen places like this before -- two other pet hospitals who claimed to work with exotics, but in actuality seemed to know very little about rodents, and charged you $70 for the privilege of being told that they had no idea what was wrong with your hamster.
The vet was kind enough, but again, there were some little things which made me more uneasy about his abilities with hamsters. First of all, he seemed reluctant to try to pick her up, and mentioned how the dwarf hamsters were very "bitey", which struck me as odd -- because they're not, really, as a species -- I've heard of some darling, sweet hamsters that never bit in their lives. And Tink doesn't, either, unless you wake her up, or she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Then, once he had picked her up, he was having some trouble holding her. He pressed her eye, and said it was "firm", but didn't explain what that meant. He put her back down and didn't touch her again. He mentioned how there might be some sort of infection behind the eye -- exactly what my regular vet had said -- but how there was no way to tell without operating. He offered to stay late and operate, which was nice, at least. He left and sent an assistant in with a print-out of all the costs. I'd seen that before, too. The sign of a large, successful, impersonal operation. It was going to cost a couple hundred dollars in the end, and with 50/50 odds that Tink would survive. Plus I wouldn't be able to stay with her. They'd do the operation after-hours and call me to let me know what happened. Then, if she survived, they'd keep her there overnight in an incubator.
Oh God! There just had to be another way. So I said no to the operation, and yes to drops and ointment. I thought I'd rather be with her if she was going to die, than let her die in some strange place under anesthesia.
She was very tired, too, it seemed -- too tired to bite (which she does quite readily, when provoked), and actually fell asleep in my hand a couple of times while Clara and I tried to clean ointment off of her. That's a first for her. We had taken to trying to clean her with cotton pads and some drops of gentle dog shampoo in warm water, and then using a hair-dryer and tiny, soft cosmetic brushes to fluff her fur. It was a losing battle, though, because even if we did manage to get her cleaner, we had to put more ointment on her, and THAT would eventually end up all over her head, again. She was so tired and miserable, that she just lay in my hands through all this, occasionally dozing off. If she got restless, I'd let her run around on the table, and she looked really frightful -- all hunched and scraggly, with one big staring eye, the other, normal, eye scrunched closed. Clara pointed out her "hunch" -- she said that her mice would do that when they were really miserable or about to die.
Those two days -- Wednesday and Thursday -- were the worst. By Thursday night I was worried that I had made the wrong choice, that Tink was in continual pain, that she had a raging infection in her eye. That night, when I held her, her tiny body was shivering all over. And her beautiful fur, which she had always kept so neat and clean, was matted flat against her head in some places, stuck up in stiff spikes in others. Her little poops were all wrong, too -- the wrong color, and too soft. Probably because she was ingesting about 50 percent of the medicine we managed to get on her, through her process of grooming. Most heart-breaking of all was, though, was how sweetly she was bearing her misfortune. She was more patient than I had ever seen her. By that night, she seemed to have learned to brace herself and keep still when I applied her drops and smoothed on a glob of ointment. In fact, as I held her and gently brushed at her matted hair, she licked my hand and fingers. I think she was grooming me, too. That's when I decided it didn't matter how much it would cost -- I would put it on a credit card -- but I would take her to her regular vet for that surgery.
Friday, I drove back to LA. Tink's eye was looking better, but I made an appointment with her vet anyway, for Saturday morning, and checked on the price of surgery. It was less than half of what that other place was going to charge. Of course. I kept stopping to check on her -- at one point I pulled off of the freeway in a panic -- because she wasn't moving, or responding to my voice. I think she was just deeply asleep. She woke up when I picked her up, thank God, and I doubled my driving speed after that, trying to get her home faster.
Saturday was the end of the nightmare. That morning, Tink's eye had shrank back to almost normal size, AND we were going to see her vet. What a relief to get to Dr. Oliver's office! Small, cramped, filled to the brim with pictures and stuffed animals of all kinds. And Dr. Oliver is the best. She wrapped Tink in a towel and started washing off her eye -- and Tink just sat there! No squirming. I said how shocking that was, and she joked that she had a unique gift for torturing animals. But of course, the opposite is true. She has the confidence and assurance of lots of experience, and once you see that, you realize how little those other vets know.
So Tink didn't need surgery, Dr. Oliver thought. She hoped that the eye would simply get reabsorbed into Tink's body, and diasappear. The eye itself was whitish -- Dr. Oliver said it's completely gone. She is almost certainly blind in that eye, and it isn't producing tears, so I have to keep it lubricated with drops -- but no more ointment, yay! And as a result, Tink's fur is starting to look a little more normal. And today, Tink was closing her eye on her own! That means that there's no nerve damage, I think.
The week of the Franken-Eye is over.
I went up to visit Clara in San Francisco for about 10 days. I was supposed to relax, hang out, and get lots of job applications done. Unfortunately, there was a most tragic turn of events. I had brought Tink, in her aquarium, and a big tub of toys and food up with me. Six days into it, I noticed that Tink seemed to be having trouble closing her right eye. I showed it to Clara, and she thought we should at least put something on it, to keep it moist. She told me how when they operated on mice, they had to put vaseline on their eyes because the mice wouldn't close their eyes when they were under anesthesia. I hunted online for dwarf hamsters and eye trouble, and found this article on Sputnik and Kosmo, two dwarfs who had glaucoma. It also mentioned something about putting ointment on the eyes, so they wouldn't dry out. So Clara and I dabbed a little Neosporin on Tink's eye, and went to bed. (Note: This was not a good idea, I later learned. Neosporin shouldn't be put into anyone's eye, human or animal. Vaseline isn't great, but it's still better than Neosporin. I read on a vet site about prolapsed eyes in dogs, that one could flush the eye with saline, and then use KY jelly. That makes more sense, as KY jelly is water-based. But, better yet, is ointment from the store especially formulated for eyes. We couldn't have gotten it that night, as all the stores were already closed, but we should've used Vaseline rather than Neosporin. Sigh. I am always learning.)
The Franken-Eye
The next day, Tink looked AWFUL. She had rubbed the Neosporin all over herself while grooming, which flattened her hair and made her look half her size. This in turn made her eye look all the bigger, and scarier. I called her vet in LA, and she said it was urgent for Tink to see a vet, that there might be some sort of infection behind her eye that was swelling and pushing the eye out. So I made an appointment for that evening with an unknown vet up in San Francisco. The place was very nice, with clean, smart little appointment rooms equipped with metal tables. All the literature and pictures on the walls were about cats and dogs. Ah, the usual pet hospital scenario.
I started to get uneasy -- I had seen places like this before -- two other pet hospitals who claimed to work with exotics, but in actuality seemed to know very little about rodents, and charged you $70 for the privilege of being told that they had no idea what was wrong with your hamster.
The vet was kind enough, but again, there were some little things which made me more uneasy about his abilities with hamsters. First of all, he seemed reluctant to try to pick her up, and mentioned how the dwarf hamsters were very "bitey", which struck me as odd -- because they're not, really, as a species -- I've heard of some darling, sweet hamsters that never bit in their lives. And Tink doesn't, either, unless you wake her up, or she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Then, once he had picked her up, he was having some trouble holding her. He pressed her eye, and said it was "firm", but didn't explain what that meant. He put her back down and didn't touch her again. He mentioned how there might be some sort of infection behind the eye -- exactly what my regular vet had said -- but how there was no way to tell without operating. He offered to stay late and operate, which was nice, at least. He left and sent an assistant in with a print-out of all the costs. I'd seen that before, too. The sign of a large, successful, impersonal operation. It was going to cost a couple hundred dollars in the end, and with 50/50 odds that Tink would survive. Plus I wouldn't be able to stay with her. They'd do the operation after-hours and call me to let me know what happened. Then, if she survived, they'd keep her there overnight in an incubator.
Oh God! There just had to be another way. So I said no to the operation, and yes to drops and ointment. I thought I'd rather be with her if she was going to die, than let her die in some strange place under anesthesia.
I asked if they had some way to clean her fur off, and he said that since she was more comfortable with me holding her, I should just do it at home with q-tips and some diluted dish-soap. Hmm. Not a very satisfying answer...
The next day her eye hadn't improved. In fact, what appeared to be pus had started oozing from the corners of her eyes. I put ointment and drops on her eye about every 4 hours. The eye was becoming increasingly sensitive -- she was chattering continually, now, when I picked her up, and would let out a big "squawk!" when I tried to clean it with a q-tip, and would jerk when the drops hit her eye, which made them run down into her nose, and then she would sneeze and start frantically grooming at her whiskers.She was very tired, too, it seemed -- too tired to bite (which she does quite readily, when provoked), and actually fell asleep in my hand a couple of times while Clara and I tried to clean ointment off of her. That's a first for her. We had taken to trying to clean her with cotton pads and some drops of gentle dog shampoo in warm water, and then using a hair-dryer and tiny, soft cosmetic brushes to fluff her fur. It was a losing battle, though, because even if we did manage to get her cleaner, we had to put more ointment on her, and THAT would eventually end up all over her head, again. She was so tired and miserable, that she just lay in my hands through all this, occasionally dozing off. If she got restless, I'd let her run around on the table, and she looked really frightful -- all hunched and scraggly, with one big staring eye, the other, normal, eye scrunched closed. Clara pointed out her "hunch" -- she said that her mice would do that when they were really miserable or about to die.
Those two days -- Wednesday and Thursday -- were the worst. By Thursday night I was worried that I had made the wrong choice, that Tink was in continual pain, that she had a raging infection in her eye. That night, when I held her, her tiny body was shivering all over. And her beautiful fur, which she had always kept so neat and clean, was matted flat against her head in some places, stuck up in stiff spikes in others. Her little poops were all wrong, too -- the wrong color, and too soft. Probably because she was ingesting about 50 percent of the medicine we managed to get on her, through her process of grooming. Most heart-breaking of all was, though, was how sweetly she was bearing her misfortune. She was more patient than I had ever seen her. By that night, she seemed to have learned to brace herself and keep still when I applied her drops and smoothed on a glob of ointment. In fact, as I held her and gently brushed at her matted hair, she licked my hand and fingers. I think she was grooming me, too. That's when I decided it didn't matter how much it would cost -- I would put it on a credit card -- but I would take her to her regular vet for that surgery.
Friday, I drove back to LA. Tink's eye was looking better, but I made an appointment with her vet anyway, for Saturday morning, and checked on the price of surgery. It was less than half of what that other place was going to charge. Of course. I kept stopping to check on her -- at one point I pulled off of the freeway in a panic -- because she wasn't moving, or responding to my voice. I think she was just deeply asleep. She woke up when I picked her up, thank God, and I doubled my driving speed after that, trying to get her home faster.
Saturday was the end of the nightmare. That morning, Tink's eye had shrank back to almost normal size, AND we were going to see her vet. What a relief to get to Dr. Oliver's office! Small, cramped, filled to the brim with pictures and stuffed animals of all kinds. And Dr. Oliver is the best. She wrapped Tink in a towel and started washing off her eye -- and Tink just sat there! No squirming. I said how shocking that was, and she joked that she had a unique gift for torturing animals. But of course, the opposite is true. She has the confidence and assurance of lots of experience, and once you see that, you realize how little those other vets know.
So Tink didn't need surgery, Dr. Oliver thought. She hoped that the eye would simply get reabsorbed into Tink's body, and diasappear. The eye itself was whitish -- Dr. Oliver said it's completely gone. She is almost certainly blind in that eye, and it isn't producing tears, so I have to keep it lubricated with drops -- but no more ointment, yay! And as a result, Tink's fur is starting to look a little more normal. And today, Tink was closing her eye on her own! That means that there's no nerve damage, I think.
The week of the Franken-Eye is over.
