Not a good sign

A bit of a health crisis at the homestead. Milo, our intrepid hamster has some sort of eye infection and he is losing weight, and he's not his usual wheel running self. He's a bit sluggish.

It all started Monday, when I noticed Milo's right eye looked a little more closed than his left. I figured it was the copious amount of seeds he had packed in his right cheek. When I picked him up on Tuesday, his eye seemed even narrower and he seemed sluggish. Since I have had these bouts of insomnia, if I'm up at 3:00 am I almost always hear Milo running in his wheel, I haven't heard it this week, his wheel has been untouched. We also changed his cage out and put new shavings in, and generally Milo is frantically re-arranging his space and building a mountainous bed of shavings to sleep in. Sadly, when we put him back in his cage he wandered about aimlessly, did not create his mountain of shavings for his bed, but just lay down after apathetically nibbling at a few seeds.

Yesterday Allie called me at work after she got home from school, and said, "Mommy, its worse. Milo's eye is completely closed shut with some gunk on it"

J. was the hero of the day, getting home earlier than me he washed out Milo's eye, which was really pussy and got it open again. Poor Milo sqeaked and sqeaked but seemed relieved to get his eye open. His head was completely soaked with water, because it took quite a bit to get him cleaned.

Milo is a dwarf hamster. He fits in the palm of my hand and weighs maybe 2 or 3 ounces, so he doesn't have a lot of body mass to spare.

This morning we all peeked in at Milo in his cage, he was sleeping peacefully, although he had not built his usual mountain of shavings bed.

If Milo is not on the mend, I think Monday I will take him to the vet.

This is is stressing me out. We can't lose our Milo, nor do I think Allie would do at all well with this. She's a very sensitive girl.