Sick hamster - skin issues

[Dedenne]

Hi my hamster is sick and I need some help on what to do

Background info:
She is a dwarf hamster (probably a winter white but since she was adopted by me from bad conditions I’m not completely sure) that is around 1 year and 10 months but she has not started to show clear signs of aging yet, she has actually got really soft and “perky” after I changed her food in February.
She lives in a detolf cage with aspen and hemp bedding.
She has become addicted to digging the last month and also drinks and eats a lot more. She is about 44g, meaning she is fat, but she was 50g when I got her

Issue:
I realized a few days ago that she had a lump of dried blood next to one of her ears and I got really scared. I peeled it away and tried to clean it up, It is not in the ear but just below it. The day after I realized she has the same problem next to her other ear but it is really hard to see. When looking at it today it looks like eczema, she probably itches it but since she is a bit anti-social I do not see her behavior that often but the times I see her out and around she does not look bothered at all. Her fur looks completely ok, making it hard to actually see the “wound”. It does not look like the pictures of mites I have seen, no black dots and the ear itself looks really clean.
I have no exotic veterinarian close to me but I have an ordinary one and I have been thinking of going there but since she does not look bothered and since she is old I wanted to check with you guys first. Any tips of what I can do for her?

[cypher]

Do you think it possible that there might be something in the cage that she's catching herself on, a hole that's too small in a house or something, something that may have become a bit sharp that she could be rubbing on?
I would have a good check around the cage for anything that might be the cause of the problem, if it's not that then it could be mites, they do normally scratch a lot with mites but not always so it's hard to be sure without getting a vet to check.
Without seeing it it's hard to tell what else it might be.

44g isn't fat by any means btw! They do vary a lot in size & weight so it's hard to give an average but she isn't big at all at that weight.

[Dedenne]

I’m terribly sorry for answering so late but with a sick pet, work interview and final exams life have been hectic!
I waited a few days just to see if she was going to get better if she had accidentally scratched herself but no such luck.

(just read if interested in the story, diagnostics comes in the next paragraph)
I called the university veterinary on Monday (I live in a city where you can study to become a vet so they have a really big animal hospital here)
The girl I talked to got a bit worried but said that they did not have an expert on animals such as hamster on hand and also no time until the next week to meet an ordinary vet. And since I do not have a car I can not go to the closest exotic vet that is 2h away. She, therefore, directed me to a much smaller vet that is not an expert but is really interested in hamsters, mouse, rabbits and so on. I called her and she also got really worried that it was a tumor and told me that they had a time right away. So, waking up a grumpy hamster and putting her in her traveling cage where she promptly went to sleep and doing what I could to minimizing the risk of her getting cold while we waited for the bus. We got there and she had a look.
My hamster behaved very well! She did not bite anyone but screamed two times when we woke her up and when the doctor poked at her wound. The vet said that she was a real sweetheart and her own hamsters would have bitten anyone being examined like that, especially a stranger and that I took her in at an early stage of whatever the sickness is. We sat at the floor since the vet was scared of dropping her and the vet also said it was the best moment of the day holding a little hamster that was cleaning itself

Diagnostics!
Good news: It is not a tumor and the vet was impressed by how healthy she looked overall.
The bad news is that we do not really know what it is since it does not look like an infection since the ear in itself is clean but it does not look like typical mites either. The skin overall on her apparently looks a bit pinker than the vet would expect, but it is uncertain if it was the stress, just her color or irritation. She found ONE mite (the Demodex family - is found on all mammals) when taking samples and therefore this is our best chance that since she is old she has a lower immune system and cannot fend off the mites that naturally lives in her fur. So I got some solution to clean her wound with and also a spot on medication towards parasites (for cats so I’m just going to put a tiiiiny drop of the solution between her shoulder blades at 3 times at different intervals.)

Back to the boring story for the person that is interested:
I applied this solution to her Wednesday and it went horribly wrong since she just as I was putting on the medicine jerked. So I had to wipe her off with a baby wipe so she would not lick the medicine. She was so angry with me afterward and looked like a drenched cat (I know that you should never wash a hamster, but I panicked not knowing what a side effect would be of her liking it so it was a pest or cholera choice at that point). I stayed up with her for 4h crying and believing she would die.
Now she is totally fine and her wounds look a lot better so I have to wait and see if she fully recovers or not.

It got pricey, since she is not insured, but it was totally worth it!

[Thin Lizzy]

Good to hear your hammy got treatment and is on the mend.