From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2001-02-21 02:06:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Chordoma (and delurk)
> Here's a great question! What else could it be? Anyone?
As someone else said, could be a chondrosarcoma but those are really
unusual and if memory serves, sometimes pathologists used to mistakenly
say that chordomas were chondrosarcomas before there was much familiarity
with ferret tissue...
I don't have it with me to double-check, but I think that Karen Purcell's
book has a picture of a mast cell tumor that just so happens to be on the
tip of the tail, and to my non-vet-eye it looked a lot like a chordoma.
More ulcerated than most, but it had that club-type of look to it. The
picture captions are on a separate page from the pictures, and I was
really surprised at that one! (Mast cell would also be a less urgent kind
of thing as these have always been benign in ferrets....)
My ferret Willard had a chordoma waaaaay down low near the base of his
tail - an odd location, but he was an odd boy! *g* They're usually at the
tip and occasionally up near the neck/shoulders (much worse prognosis) and
Willard's is the only one I've heard of being down that far. His entire
tail besides a little stub was amputated, and he looked *very* stylish
like that. I've kicked myself a million times for not photographing his
chordoma, but I do have a few "polar bear" pictures:
http://www.unc.edu/~pjdutche/boy.html
He was THE BEST ferret... I'll always miss him, but I have many happy
memories and his ashes stored in a little beanie baby polar bear. Makes
me smile.
Hey, I guess this is my de-lurk post! I'm Pam Sessoms from North
Carolina. My husband Eric and I currently have five ferrets in our house:
Sonic - 7 yrs - blind from retinal atrophy, has insulinoma, goes diabetic
on pred easily, currently doing VERY well after a lot of weird stuff. My
sweety!
Sunny - 7 yrs - insulinoma, advanced dilated cardiomyopathy, doing
pretty well on her meds. A daddy's girl.
Mojo - 5 yrs - left adrenal removed last year with so far full cure,
"surprise" insulinoma found at time of surgery. Walks funny from a badly
healed rear leg fracture during kithood (he was found like that) and a
spinal cord injury. Gives me and our vet kisses, bites most everyone
else. Demented but very lovable. :)
Cricket - approx 5 yrs - rescue turned permanent family member. Probably
starting down Adrenal Road. Found as a stray and nearly died from bloody
diarrhea the night I took her in. Had every kind of diarrhea in the book
for two months and is finally OK.
Bear - less than 1 yr - a stray I took in two weeks ago, will not be a
permanent stay. VERY healthy now that he's got his weight back up, big
beautiful sable boy with lush fur. Hopefully going home this weekend with
a dear ferret friend who just lost her last one the day Bear came into my
home.
I'm very interested in ferret medical stuff and very excited about this
list! Thanks Christopher!
-Pam S.