From:
Teena Austin
Date: 2001-06-03 17:25:00 UTC
Subject: Re: elevated calcium
Thank you so much, Dr. Williams, your reply is very helpful to me in
making some sense of what happened to Liz.
I very much appreciate your time and concern,
Teena Austin
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "Bruce Williams, DVM" <williams@e...>
wrote:
> --- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., "Teena Austin" <austin@a...> wrote:
> > Hello Dr. Williams,
> >
> > The ferret Dr. Garro is referring to is mine; see my post #3976
for
> > background on symptoms and onset.
> >
> > In addition to calcium of 16.2 as previously mentioned, other
> > findings out of the reference range in the chemistry panel were:
> > AST 223 (46-118 normal)
> > CK 3443 (98-564)
> > Albumin 3.2 (3.4-4.8)
> > Total Protein 6.6 (4.3-6.0)
> > Globulin 3.4 (0.2-2.4)
> > BUN 68 (10-45)
> > Cholesterol 273 (96-249)
> > Glucose 97 (120-144)
> > Potassium 3.1 (3.9-5.5)
> >
> > CBC results out of ranges were:
> > WBC 7.1 (3.5-7.0)
> > Neutrophil Seg 72 (31-57)
> > Eosinophil 2 (0-1)
> >
> > If this suggests anything to you other than lymphosarcoma, I'd be
> > interested to know. The onset seemed so sudden and she has
> > deteriorated so rapidly...
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Teena Austin
> >
> >
>
> Dear Teena -
> I am sorry to hear of Liz's passing (I received email from Dr.
Garro.)
>
> I am hopeful that some tissues were saved - Dr. Garro said that he
> did impression smears of lymph nodes, and perhaps he was able to
save
> the entire nodes - I would be more than happy to look at the nodes
to
> confirm the diagnosis of lymphoma.
>
> The bloodwork that you posted above is not really all that bad - I
> would expect that the renal function would be worse in such as
> hypercalcemic animal. The globulins are elevated and the albumin
is
> a bit low, suggesting some chornic inflamamtion of the GI tract.
>
> Hypercalcemia of malignancy is certainly well-documented in the dog
> and to the lesser extend in the cat, but I think this may be the
> first case that I have seen in a ferret. Unfortunately, it looks
as
> if we will never definitively prove it, as at this point, we simply
> have two concurrent syndromes - a veryhigh calcium, and a
lymphoma.
> The only way to truly prove that the two are related is to be able
to
> remove the tumor and see the calcium go back to normal. But it
> certainly looks suspicious enough on the face of it to at least
> consider it presumptive.
>
> Once again, I am sorry for your loss.
>
>
> With kindest regards,
>
> Bruce H. Williams, DVM, DACVP
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