should I operate on mammary tumours?

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oriane

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Monkey has 2 large mammary tumours and ?pituitary tumour.

She has been treated for the pituitary tumour since June 6th with cabergoline and prednisolone and appears to be doing well. She eats one handed most of the time but can manage solids. Has maybe slight difficulty swallowing because sometimes she looks like she chokes for a second on some foods. She has some hind leg weakness but can still manage to climb the large cage I have and choses to do this rather than use the platforms I put in to make it easy for her.

The problem is she has 2 mammary tumours. One medium one in her neck, conker sized. One large one in her groin, bigger than a ping pong ball. I didn't get them operated on because I assumed the pituitary tumour would kill her.

They are now starting to get quite big and nasty and are likely to impede on her movement maybe in a month. Her skin looks a bit flakey and red on one.

I really don't know what to do now and the vets don't know enough to give advice.

She is approximately 28 months old.
 
Monkey has 2 large mammary tumours and ?pituitary tumour.

She has been treated for the pituitary tumour since June 6th with cabergoline and prednisolone and appears to be doing well. She eats one handed most of the time but can manage solids. Has maybe slight difficulty swallowing because sometimes she looks like she chokes for a second on some foods. She has some hind leg weakness but can still manage to climb the large cage I have and choses to do this rather than use the platforms I put in to make it easy for her.

The problem is she has 2 mammary tumours. One medium one in her neck, conker sized. One large one in her groin, bigger than a ping pong ball. I didn't get them operated on because I assumed the pituitary tumour would kill her.

They are now starting to get quite big and nasty and are likely to impede on her movement maybe in a month. Her skin looks a bit flakey and red on one.

I really don't know what to do now and the vets don't know enough to give advice.

She is approximately 28 months old.

Most mammary tumors are benign and won't come back if they're surgically removed, so most unspayed females will have them pop up from time to time in their lives. From what you've described I definitely think you should get her the surgery, especially if it's going to impede her ability to move about. Leaving them untreated will cause them to keep growing otherwise, and the bigger they are the harder it is to remove them.
 
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My 24 month old girl Zelda just had her second tumor surgery. The first was about three months ago, and the one mammary tumor came back, plus another on the other armpit. I, too, debated about putting her under and through all the trauma. I put it to my vet, did he think she could handle it? His advice: The tumors will eventually kill her anyway, so why not try? Rats heal quickly and are good surgical candidates. She had them removed on Saturday, and so far she seems well except her younger cagemate attacked her yesterday and tore a hole in her back! I am not sure why this happened, but I put her back in the cage today and another attack happened. But aside from that, you might as well try if you can afford it to have the tumors removed.
 
Usually I'd have no problem getting them removed.
she's had one removed before but it was very stressful for her. She spent 14 odd hours of chewing her fingers

Has anyone had any experience of putting a rat with a pituitary tumour through surgery?

I've read that the general anaesthetic can exacerbate the symptoms?
 
Usually I'd have no problem getting them removed.
she's had one removed before but it was very stressful for her. She spent 14 odd hours of chewing her fingers

Has anyone had any experience of putting a rat with a pituitary tumour through surgery?

I've read that the general anaesthetic can exacerbate the symptoms?

Did the vet prescribe any pain medication for her?
 
Unspayed girls are very prone to tumours and tumour recurrence. In fact, my vet doesn't do tumour removals without a spay because it just comes back.
But... with a PT, going under anesthetics can making it much worse and grow much faster. That would be my main concern. In fact, if that was my rat, I wouldn't do it. :(
 
I'm so sorry for giving you bad advice >< My mind was kind of groggy from the stress of my own girl's health issues and I didn't thoroughly go over everything you said. Definitely won't make that mistake ever again. I just looked up pituitary tumours and completely agree with jorats. Disregard everything I previously said.
 
I too wouldn't chance going under anesthetic with a rat showing PT symptoms even if treated. Godmother's girl was the only one I know of that successfully went through an op and from what I understand was on bromocriptine long term and was showing NO symptoms of PT when she had the surgery, unlike your gal. You can literally lose them in days post-op with the PT pushed into high gear. I am sorry :(
 
Thanks for your advice. I was going to go to the vets tomorrow to see what they thought but I won't now.

She hated the operation last time so I didn't like the idea of it.
Plus I still feel guilty about putting my other rat Magic through many operations when her tumour turned out to be malignant.

I will get my new baby rat a spay soon now that I think about it.

Here are some photos of Monkey:
 
Poor sweetie pie! I have the same situation - a girl who has a PT and is growing tumors. She has already had several surgeries to remove tumors before her PT became apparent. Now that she has the PT, there will be no more surgeries. I don't want her last little while to be spent being sore from surgery. The girl I had before was great on Cabergoline and Dex for two months, and then crashed and died over 24 hours.
So I definitely would not recommend surgery as her time is limited and she could have a crisis at any time. Enjoy the time you have left with her.
 
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