From:
fhbythesea@aol.com
Date: 2001-04-23 05:29:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] Re: RC tumor
In a message dated 4/23/01 4:46:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
williams@e... writes:
> Actually, being a male the cahance of this being a mammary gland is
> fairly minimal. However, the scent glands of the prepuce are
> apocrine glands, and this is the overwhelmingly most likely diagnosis
> (has been since I saw the gross photos.)
>
> At this point, being an aprocine gland tumor, the chance of
> metastasis internally is pretty high, so iven if you could remove the
> large preputial tumor, chances are that he would still succumb to the
> same tumor (albeit inside the abdomen.)
Dr. Williams
As I have told JD, we had an extremely similar case involving a shelter
ferret - My vet (who is on this list and should scan the photo and post it!)
performed the intial and then two subsequent aggressive surgeries to remove
first the tumor, then the prepuce/bacula, performed a PU and removed
metastized tumors, and finally just the metastized tumors - and PeeDee has
been more than 6 months without a recurrance. Before this, the longest he
went between surgeries was 3 months. I firmly believe that the reason PeeDee
is still around is because of our aggressiveness in treating the tumors and
he is today a happy, healthy ferret. I know that if I believed the pathology,
that PeeDee's long term outlook was grave and the prognosis was weeks to
month. Thankfully, the prognosis in this case was wrong.
While expensive, its more than worth the cost to me to know that PeeDee is
cancer free and will enjoy a fairly normal lifespan. I know that I am lucky
enough to have a self supporting (for the most part anyway) shelter that
allows me to be aggressive in treating cancers and disease and I thank my
supporters and my vets every day.
Lisa Leidig, Head Ferret
The Ferret Haven "By-the-Sea"
www.ferrethaven.org