Surgery on a 2+ year old hamster

>>18452944
Worked at a feed store with live mice for snake owners. Tumors were pretty common with older, bigger rats. But like you said, most of them just didn't even care they had tumors and would still be just as energetic, but yes their tumors would get very big, very quickly.

Doing surgery on something so small, I don't see your chances of the hamster living through it to be very high. The chance of pneumonia would skyrocket, which is the leading cause of most of the deaths that I witnessed there at the feed store. (coughing mice, lethargic, blue skin around mouth).

I would say to let it be, and enjoy the time you do have with her. I'm no vet, but even small complications of wounds on small animals are hard to treat effectively, let alone an incision or stitches made by a vet.

Poor hamtaro

>>18452944
Put her to sleep.
Give her a great goodbye party with fruits and stuff hamsters like and then take her to a vet to sleep her.

>>18452944
The animal is so small and short lived
I don't see the point in surgery and I am surprised the vets even offer things like this.

I'm sorry for your hamster and I am so glad a hamster had an awesome life with an owner that truly loved him. Most hamsters get bought for kids and forgotten about.

>>18452944
Dude. Don't.

Like you said, your hamster is already pretty fucking old. When you have a medical procedure performed on a pet, it is your responsibility to take your own feelings out of it and dispassionately consider whether or not it's worth it. You can't just be all gung-ho and decide that there's no such thing as 'too far' when it comes to your precious baby. That's being a bad pet owner. You HAVE to consider: how much pain will the procedure cause? How much will it improve their quality of life? How long will they live afterwards, will they even live long enough after the recovery period to substantially benefit? You owe your pet as painless and peaceful a death as possible - having to make that eventual calculus is part of the price of owning an animal.

In this case, it's objectively not worth it, dude. I'm sorry to be so cold - I love animals, I've had so many pets and it always hurts to lose them, but your hamster is not gonna live for much longer, tumor or no tumor. Surgery sucks, recovery will be painful, and the recovery process will be hard on your hamster's health. So hard that she will almost certainly die during the recovery process, if not during the surgery itself. Like ... I'd bet real money on it. It's that likely.

The good news is the tumor probably isn't that painful, like that guy said above. Her quality of life will be fine with it. Let her enjoy however much time she has left, and enjoy it with her. And I'm sorry about your pet, dude. But it sounds like you gave her a great life (so far) and it's certainly been a long one, for a hamster.

(in the interests of full disclosure, no, I am not a vet, but I have volunteered at vet clinics and many animal shelters, and been through similar experiences with many, many pets)

>>18453124
Concurring with this guy.

I had to put down a cat recently and it was the hardest decision ever, but I had to question whether I was keeping him alive for myself or for him. He was clearly in a lot of pain and the vets were telling me there wasn't much they could do, even if they treated him, they were likely only prolonging his life by probably a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, so I had to let him go.

The same cat also had a lot of health problems when he was around 2 and I shelled out a lot of money to get him healthy. He was 13 when I put him down.

>>18452944
Hamsters cost like ten bucks why would you waste time giving it surgery? It's not a dog, or a horse, or a cat. It's a fucking rodent. Just replace it.

Do you think that hamster's life is gonna be okey dokey after this? NO. It's life is going to SUCK.

>>18453167
It's not about the cost of the animal, it's about the bond.

It's kind of weird to me too that this guy bonded to a hamster so thoroughly that he wants to pay for surgery for it, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

I've had people give me shit for how bonded I was to my cat, who I got for free.

>>18453174
Even then, the emotional and physical turmoil that the hamster is going to go through is madness.

Pets dont deserve that. It should be put down for jts own good

>>18453238
no agreed, i was the cat poster who said he should not prolong the hamster's life for his own needs.