Dry eye?

[phaidraft]

Has anyone ever encountered a rat who has problems with dry eye?

A little background - I brought Lizzy home about four weeks ago. From that first day, she has had porphyrin discharge around her left eye. She cleans it off, but it always comes back. She has no other symptoms. I figured it was stress from having a new home. After two weeks when it hadn't gone away, I took her in to a vet. The vet did an eye stain, didn't see any scratches or ulcers. She sent us home with gentacin eye drops to use for two weeks (also mentioning that we could be dealing with the beginnings of a URI). We just had our two week check up today and the eye hasn't changed a bit. I now have an ointment to put on the eye to help keep it moist in addition to the eye drops. Our vet thinks it might be that Lizzy has dry eyes... says she hasn't seen it in rats before, but other species get it, so why not?

I'm just wondering if anyone has heard of this before. Thanks!

[phaidraft]

Nobody? 

[Kendra]

Has the vet flushed the eye with saline?  I saw something a bit similar once, and it turned out our girl (who was hairless, thus no eyelashes) had a large amount of lint built up in the eye. 

[phaidraft]

Yes, she flushed it. It just ends up being dry again within a few minutes.

The vet said there's a possibility that Lizzy's tear duct just isn't working properly. She said there is a test they can do for it, but they'd have to put her out and she's not comfortable doing it for that reason. Maybe if I get her spayed sometime, someone can check while she's under..