Daisy has a lump

Sweet little Daisy

This is a very hard update to make, while Daisy is fine and healthy she has a lump and unfortunately because of its location we’ve decided not to have it removed. We first noticed a pea-sized lump on Daisy’s neck not long after Pearl died. It was hard enough finding a lump on another rat after both Pearl and Apricot had both had lumps removed, and of course Pearl dieing, but also the fact it was on her neck. We took Daisy to the vet and she confirmed what we were concerned about, that a lump on a rat’s neck is not the easiest thing to remove. There are a lot of blood vessels in the neck and if the lump is attached to one of these the chances of the rat surviving the surgery can be very slim.

To make matters worse, the lump increased in sized very rapidly further adding to our concern that it may be attached to an artery. With everything that has been going on with our little rats we decided not to have Daisy operated on, as loosing her during surgery is just too much to for me to contemplate. For now Daisy is her normal happy self. The lump is very big, but she is not letting it bother her at all, she runs around and climbs with the rest of her rattie family.

Daisy has always been a strange little rat, she’s a bit like a ghost. She’s very quiet and she sneaks around like she’s in her own little world. We suspect she may be deaf, which would explain why she doesn’t respond to things like the other rats do. We love her very much, not just because she’s mum of Apple, Bramble, Lime, Peach and Apricot, but because she’s our ghostly little girl.

Daisy with her family in happier times

We are treating Daisy extra special and spoiling her with baby food, which we use to give her daughter, Apricot, her daily medicine so Daisy gets the spare. While Daisy is not the sort of rat you can cuddle she does appreciate food, so she is very pleased about being spoilt.