Well, as my previous post reflected, Teppy had her first vet appointment today. She weighs a whopping 51 grams! However, a lot of that may not even be her own weight... it turns out she may not be as fat as Kara and I thought because the vet has determined the red, swollen bulge near her left shoulder is a mammary tumor, the only kind of tumor that would also affect her hormones to cause the patchy hairloss... Fortunately, we did not have to euthenize her today, but unfortunately, her cancer is terminal, and there is no way of knowing how long she has without having a very expensive biopsy done. Surgery is not a likely option because she is so small that the surgery alone could kill her, and it would cost about 12 times what she cost when we adopted her. We couldn't do that to her. There is also the option of giving her some prescribed drops that could temporarily keep the tumor from growing, but hamsters do not like the medicine, and it would only prolong the inevitable... eventually the medicine would stop working.
The doctor said that she is about 40 years old in hamster years, so she is basically middle-aged, and we would likely only have her for another two years if she were healthy. He did say that she doesn't appear to be in any severe pain right now... she's not limping and she's still eating regularly and running on her wheel, so all we can really do is keep an eye on her. There is a chance that we could wake up tomorrow to find a dead hamster in her cage, or she could live another year, simply adapting to the mass growing out of her side. We did purchase some vitamin drops for her water, and added a more antioxidant-rich mix to her food to attempt to slow the tumor's growth, but if she ever looks like she is having trouble moving, breathing, or she stops eating, we will have to have her euthenized... it's quite a sad thought :(
