From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2001-11-24 20:37:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] Urgent: heavy breathing/ wheezing&
(pred ??)
On Sat, 24 Nov 2001 cjbandit@a... wrote:
>
> Bandit's breathing has been heavy wheezy like for the last month or
> so, vet did not pick up anything wrong with heart. He did a
> echocardiogram?? not to long ago.
Have chest x-rays been done yet? I wonder if it's possible that he could
have some kind of pneumonia? I don't know if that would show up on an
echo... I'm going through something vaguely similar with my guy Mojo.
Weird vague wheezing/hiccuping noises, lethargy, mostly normal bloodwork,
no fever. Things we considered were allergies, asthma, pneumonia,
lymphoma, inhaled foreign body...
Anyway, long story short, Mojo did finally show some signs of inflammation
in parts of his lungs on x-ray, and when he didn't respond quickly to
antibiotics, the test done after that to try to identify the problem was a
transtracheal wash. I didn't witness this test, but as I understand it,
he was anesthetized and then a small amount of sterile water was injected
into his windpipe, stimulating a coughing reflex. Then the water and any
"lung gunk" was quickly sucked back up into the syringe. The contents
were analyzed and also cultured to see what would grow. In Mojo's case,
the findings were mostly indications of a chronic bacterial infection (we
added another antibiotic and he finally improved) and reactive changes in
his tonsils (swollen and biopsied at the time of the wash).
Anyway, just an idea or two to throw out there. I'm not a vet and this is
the only case like this I've had in my personal ferrets to this point...
so this may not be worth much...
Good luck,
-Pam S.