. . makes the medicine go down.

Or, in the case of my rat Bach Thi, it doesn't.
In order to give him his medicine, it takes three people.
Two to hold him down, and one to squirt the medicine in his mouth a few cc's at a time.
I was wondering if there was anything I could do to make it easier?

I had put a little Ensure in at the beginning of the syringe, but he caught on really fast and I had tried integrating Ensure a few times a day by syringe into his life, but for some reason he refuses to drink.

On another note . .

I went to the vet the other day and my baby rat Bup has a bacterial infection, while Bach Thi has a crusty cyst.
I wanted to know if this was normal.
Bach Thi's cyst was sort of like a scab, it was rounded and protruding, but looked horribly disgusting. Just gross.
The vet nearly overlooked it until I pointed it out.
Then he just grabbed it and pulled it out, and my rat then began gushing blood.
Is that a good practice? He told me to keep doing it, but I have no way to stop the bleeding and the cyst keeps coming back.
The vet ordered that they both be put on SmZ twice a day.
But none of them are really getting better.

--
My hairless, Jon has myco and tumors.
And he's suffering from severe weightloss.
The vet told me to give him a mixture of SmZ and Baytril twice a day, but he also told me that my rat wasn't going to make it.
Fortunately, his wheezing has gone away but the weightloss is still there.
He refuses to eat rat blocks, and so the only way I can get him to eat is feeding him about 100 cc's of Ensure every two hours and having him eat a mixture of wet dog food with a little kibble and dog treats and some veggies.

Is there anything else I can do to help his weight gain?
The vet said that it was "probably from tumors" but he didn't really say much else about it.
Which really irritated me.
I know that rats have fast metabolisms, especially hairlesses, and I didn't know what else to do.
Even though it seems like by the  night time he has gained some weight, he looks like a bag of skin and bones by morning.
Could anyone help me?

I raised Jon from when he was a baby and it would kill me to see him just deteriorate before my eyes.

Styptic powder REALLY burns and may not be the best thing to stop the bleeding from an abscess.  I think that putting pressure on it for several minutes (at least three to four minutes) will help.  But I just really have doubts and concerns about how that vet handled the abscess!  Do you have any other vets in the area that you can go to and get a second opinion?  As far as giving medicine, I've always had lots of luck putting it in baby cereal that has been mixed with water and then sweetened with a little bit of pancake syrup.  My guys chow down on it, no matter what kind of medicine is in there (and Baytril is notoriously bitter but they still eat it).

Deb