Tonight something very bad happened. Baru and Flan were playing together outside their cages as usual, but for some reason Flan bit Baru several times on his head before I could separate them. Baru started bleeding almost immediately and it didn't look good, so we called our vet and told him that we were going to go there in a few minutes.

It was already past 11:00pm and the doctor's office was already closed, but he came from home by car and opened just for us. He examined Baru's head and saw that there was a one centimeter long wound between his eyes. Baru was still bleeding a lot.

The doctor explained that it was a very serious wound because of its size and also because of Baru's old age (more than two and a half years old already, very old for a hamster). He told us that he would have to suture the wound, but he was afraid of using an anaesthesic because Baru probably wouldn't survive, being so old. Then he decided to try it without anaesthesia. He managed to do a suture, but the wound was still bleeding. Baru was moving too much and it was very hard to continue, so he decided to continue by using anaesthesic gas.

It took him around 10 minutes, but he did a very good job cleaning the wound and suturing it. This is what Baru looks like right now:



Baru looks fine now. He is obviously still a bit shocked, but he has been eating and playing a bit on his cage like usual until a while ago. He's now sleeping on his small porcelain home as normal. The doctor said that even though now he looks ok, we have to watch him very carefully during the following 7-10 days, because there's a chance that he might get worse.

I'm still impressed about how the doctor has handled this. I don't know if there are any Japanese people amonst the readers of this blog. But if there's any of you in Tokyo, and you own hamsters, please let me recommend you this doctor:

Doctor Ozawa
3-27-10 Kyuden
Setagaya-ku
Tokyo
http://www.dr-ozawa.jp/i/setagaya.html