A Swollen Situation

Its always concerning when I come into work, and upon checking in on the animals in our sick room, see a note that says "Must see Vet ASAP" 
Because like...uhoh. What happened on my day off?!?! 

Honestly, I'm not quite sure how this ended up happening. 
Was it a bite? Was it a cut? Was it an allergic reaction? Was it something else?
Who knows?

But when I opened the cage where it was indicated that Vet attention was needed. 

I discovered a little Winter White hamster.
Huddled Up. 
Eyes crusty and closed.
Not a good sign for hamsters at all. 

So I turned him over to see if it was Wet tail that he was suffering from because even though it's more common in the larger Syrians. 

It wasn't wet tail. 

There was something wrong with the hamster's face! 
It looked like the bottom lip of the hamster had swollen up turning a deep purple. 
I was like O.o Oh. That's definitely not good. 

And then I looked closer.
And realized.
It wasn't the bottom lip that was swollen.

It was the tongue. 

The tongue of the hamster had swollen to the point where it was sticking out of the hamster's mouth.

And I have no idea how this even happened. 

What caused the hamster's tongue to suddenly swell up to where I'm pretty sure it was filling the entire mouth?
No. Idea.

But we had to act.
NOW.
Otherwise the hamster would probably not make the night.

I mean....seeing the condition of the hamster...the odds are very slim in the first place that it will make the night.
But if I could get him some meds....at least he'd have something. 

There was a problem, however. 
Well, multiple problems.

First problem was that we were extremely short staffed today.
Which is weird for a Saturday...
But there was only ONE manager scheduled this morning.
Which is crazy for a Saturday morning, but not surprising when I have to take into account that we've been spending all week prepping for the official inventory thing that the store does every year. So two of our managers have been working graveyard shifts to get all the overstock product we have in the store counted and organized. 
And since we must have a manager present in the store at all times....
If there's only one manager present, they can't leave. Even to take an animal to the vet. 
So they would have to wait until the next manager came in at 1:30 to get the hamster to the vet....which...not good to make it wait longer....
So there was the option where I would take the hamster to the vet instead....even though I too was the only one scheduled in my department, there was another coworker working today who would be able to cover me. 

Only...when I called the Vet.....
I was told that the Vet that sees Hamsters....would be out of town until WEDNESDAY. 
So if we wanted to take the hamster to that vet...he wouldn't be seen until then.
And well...considering I already thought the hamster wasn't going to make it through the night....
Wasn't an option. 

The next option would be our second vet that we take animals to if the first isn't available....
But they tend to be more expensive, and having never been there myself...it would have to be a manager who took the hamster to them. 

So we went with Option Three first to see if we could get away with not doing option Two. 

Option three was to go ask the Vet in our store what he thought of the situation. Which the vet in our store is just a cat/dog vet. They don't see "Exotic" animals -which a Hamster would be considered "Exotic" to them. 

Because they don't see Exotic animals, I rarely head over to them. 
But we decided to try our luck and just at least get the Vet's opinion so we could decide on a course of action from there. 

Which there is a newer vet who's recently started working there. 
Who isn't oppose to the "Oh, let me go Google this!" sort of method. But you know...more professional lol.

So when I showed him the hamster he was like. ()_() Yikes!! We gotta treat this! Let me see if we carry any meds that could work for hamsters, and ended up calling other vets that he knew of that saw exotic creatures in order to figure out the correct dosage for said hamster. 

Lol but it wasn't a quick in and out sort of thing for us.
Because while the Vet was calling around to the other clinics/hospitals to get information to help me, he was also dealing with checking bloodwork, making calls to customers about their pets, dealing with a walk in emergency where a dog was bleeding from one of it's surgical incisions, and you know...a 100 other things that were going on at the same time.

Lol so I ended up being in back for nearly 2 hours. 
-Which I recognized I could have left and come back to the hamster...
But thankfully the store was basically dead this morning. I only got called out once to help a customer in the entire two hours So yay lol. 

In the meantime, while I was patiently waiting for the Vet to multi task everything...
I was examining the hamster, trying to see if we would be able to get meds into it's mouth to help with the swelling or not. (getting close to the hamster's mouth though....it smelt like death. :S) 
Which included me gently opening the mouth further just so I could try and see how bad the swelling was... 
And discovered, to my horror....
That the Teeth. (how could I have forgotten the Teeth?!?!) has penetrated into the swollen tongue.
WHICH OW!!!!
Can you imagine how painful that could be? I mean biting your own tongue hurts. 
Imagine sharp hamster teeth stabbing into the tongue?

OW OW OW

So I immediately went into "SAVE IT" mode and went to work to see if I could get the teeth out of the tongue and get the swollen tongue out of the way of the teeth. 
Which it took a bit of work and a bit of blood....
But I managed to get the tongue shoved to the side of those gnawing teeth so that the hamster was no longer causing itself pain in that manner.

Yay for success on that! lol. 

But yah...it took them a couple of hours to finally get me the meds and such so I could give them to the hamster -ever so slowly because the tongue was swollen enough that I could only dribble the meds into the mouth.

But we now had an action plan and meds for the poor hamster.

I want to hope that the anti-inflammatory and the pain meds help... and that the swelling will go down and the hamster will feel better and recover....

But again....I'm not too confident on it living through the night.
:( 

Still we tried our best. Now it's a matter of waiting to see how it all comes out.

The one detriment though of the whole experience....is that my nose has the smell of death still lingering and that is not a pleasant smell to have. *shakes head* nope nope it doesn't.
*fingers crossed that a different scent will soon permanently clear the scent away.

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi