From:
Ulrike
Date: 2001-05-12 13:20:00 UTC
Subject: Barney sudden death- lymphosarcoma...
Hello
Last Wednesday my baby Barney was put to sleep... Saturday and Sunday he
started coughing. It was like when the other ferrets cough, I don't know why
they cough but they do it sometimes and I usually think that they've got a
hair stuck in the throat or inhaled something. Except Barney was coughing
more quietly. He only had about 2 or 3 coughing episodes and it didn't
sound bad... Monday and Tuesday he started having problems breathing, he
breathed with his abdomen and the sides were going in and out as he
breathed. But he was still playing as well. Tuesday evening he didn't play
much and you could see that he was breathing heavily and Wednesday morning
he was even worse and didn't play. Though he still ate.
So at 2.50 p.m. we went to the vets and Louise treated us from then until
5.00 p.m. She saw how badly he was breathing and first thing she said was
that they get it when there's fluid in the chest. So Barney went to have an
x-ray. He didn't want to hold still so Louise had to give him a bit of gas.
When he came round, I took him back into the waiting room but he
deteriorated in there and was in distress with the breathing, Louise was
treating somebody else but Brenda the anaesthetist took us back into the
operating room and we gave Barney oxygen which helped him and perked him up
a bit. The x-ray didn't turn out right so while Barney was still feeling ill
and was limp and quiet, they x-rayed him again and within 5 minutes we had
the x-rays. It showed that his whole chest was full of fluid... The wind
pipe was pushed right under the spine and everything else was white. Louise
said that there must be a mass in his chest that is pushing his wind pipe
up, she also said that when she felt his ribs, she tried to push them in a
bit because you can usually do that but his ribs wouldn't move inwards at
all which would suggest a mass in his chest...
So next thing Louise suggests that she drains the fluid off, she said they
sometimes have this in cats and draining the fluid and keeping it under
control with diuretics sometimes gives cats another few months. She said the
tumour didn't grow overnight and wouldn't kill him today. Well, we were
waiting in the waiting room and she came in and said his chest is full of
blood. They put the drain in on the one side and she said sometimes they hit
a blood vessel or something and get blood out but she put the drain in on
the other side and more blood so his chest was filled with blood. So Barney
was put to sleep... :*-( Pete stayed with him and Barney died as soon as
Louise put the lethal injection into his kidney, before she even started to
inject it all. With Hope and Igor, Louise had to give them 2 injections
before they died, Barney went right away. And a minute after he was dead-
his tail fluffed up... Like people sometimes notice...
Barney was only 2... And he didn't act sick at all, he was such a happy
ferret, played a lot with the others and was so hyper, all he did was run
and play and enjoy life. A week ago I was still thinking that he was one of
my healthiest ferrets! Even when the coughing started- he was still playing,
I had *no idea* how sick he was and how soon he would die...
I will write another mail about his post mortem and will type the report
out.
From Ulrike
and Jilly, Jack, Bella, Tom, Mason, Baby, Dana, Fox, Reno, Rose, Jasmine,
Spike, Hobo, Gremlin and Bobby
Missing Angel, Hope, Igor and Barney
West Wales Ferret Welfare
E-mail: ferretlove@n...
http://www.ferretlove.freeserve.co.uk
Last update 09/05/01
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