From:
ferretmom14559@yahoo.com
Date: 2001-07-20 22:08:00 UTC
Subject: Possible Juvenile Lymphoma
Hello all - I would like to start by saying I have been trying to
look through the archives on this with little luck. I apologize if
this should have been relatively easy for me to find.
We have a 2 yr old MF male with possible juvenile lymphoma. I
brought him to our vet today (he is supposed to be one of the top
ferret vets going). Just our luck that he left today for a two week
vacation in Alaska. However the techs in his office are also very
ferret knowledgable and are doing everything they can to help my
little one.
This is what little I know and I am looking for some guidance. He
was not eating and was passing very small amounts of stool. Up until
last night I believe he had been eating some. When I came home last
night he had broken out of the cage and was running through the house
like crazy. After picking up the mess he had made I returned him to
the cage for the night. I tried to give him a treat, but he wanted
no part of it. That in itself is not all that uncommon. He can
sometimes be picky. This last week I had been trying to determine if
he had lost weight or if our other male had been putting on a few.
It turns out he is down from 2.13 lbs to 2.5 lbs. He is still
drinking very well, just has a complete loss of interest in food.
They said there are no signs of dehydration. With three of them
sharing a cage it gets hard to determine how much each is eating and
using the litter. I had to stand vigil over the litter to see what
was going on with him in that respect. I was happy to see he was
still going, just in very small amounts.
The hospital took an xray which confirmed a large mass near his
spleen. They are force feeding him soup and starting him on a
steriod treatment that will hopefully reduce the mass and increase
his appetite.
If we can get him to eat(I am fully prepared to feed him the duck
soup as much as he needs it), is it safe to wait the two weeks until
the vet returns or should I seek out another vet in the area? This
little one is my buddy and I want the best for him. Other than his
loss of appetite, he had been acting completely normal. The tech
said there is another vet accross town who sees ferrets, but she did
not sound overly enthused about him.
Help! Our little one is much too young to be going through this
already. I apologize for the length of this, but as you can tell I
am worried.
Lisa,
Stinky, Pepper (my sick little one) and Mitsy.