From:
melissa
Date: 2001-10-23 12:19:00 UTC
Subject: elevated red blood cell count
Hello,
I just took my 5 yr old spayed female ferret to my vet for a yearly
checkup. The physical exam showed her to be in excellent apparent health;
no teeth, eye or heart problems, spleen slightly larger than normal but
not exceptionally large. However, the results of the bloodwork came back
and the vet had this to say about the results:
- excessively high red blood cell count
- 72% of red blood cells vs serum (normal values in the 50% range?)
in a centrifuge test to separate sells from serum
- 15,000 cells per microliter in the count of number of red blood
cells per field on the slide (normal 6k-11k/microliter?)
She said there can be numerous causes but she hadn't herself seen test
results like these before. She is going to consult with another vet who
has encountered this recently and done quite a bit of research. The two
primary candidates seem to be enlarged spleen - but this ferret's spleen
is not really large at all - or cancer. Or, possibly nothing at all.
This ferret is energetic and playful, has a normal coat of fur, excellent
weight and musculature, and eats a combination of dry kitten pro plan /
eukanuba for cats / totally ferret (with a bit of raw diet thrown in when
she manages to steal some of the cat's), plus about a teaspoon per day of
wysong archetype, which is a cold-processed 99% meat, 50% protein
freeze-dried meat formulation. Her only significant recurrent problem to
date is that she has itchy skin, and develops hairballs from chewing at
her fur. She throws these up about once every two months. She gets about
one pea-sized chunk of laxatone per day and a small squirt of ferretone.
She has seemed a bit off-color the past few days, but I chalk things like
that up to normal health variations.
Can someone on the list who has experience with this let me know what
might be going on?
Thanks,
Melissa and Puff