From:
shelterwoman@yahoo.com
Date: 2002-07-08 02:40:29 UTC
Subject: Re:Radiation in Ferrets
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <17109814.1026096029286.JavaMail.root@scandium>
I noticed the discussion on radiation and though this may not help the original person who asked about radiation, I felt compelled to write about my experience with the use of radiation in ferrets.
At least 10 years ago, I had a 2 year old female ferret(PIPPY) with a tumor that was rapidly growing in the lungs, I decided to treat with radiation and with only '6 seconds' of radiation the tumor was gone! We were overjoyed!
Unfortunately the joy was short lived, as we were supposed to follow up with chemo therapy, but little Pippy developed gastric problems almost immeadiately. Since we needed to treat that first, it took about her about 3 weeks to heal and by then the tumor had grown back and larger than before.
At the time I did not know of anyone who had used radiation, but thought it was worth a try in Pippy's case, as she was the 'runt' of nine babies, had remained very tiny, but fought so hard to stay alive and we wanted to give her the chance to succeed in remaining alive!
We did not try radiation or chemo again, as she had suffered so much after the first try, we did have to put her to sleep as the tumor was doubling in size rapidly and I did not want her to suffer any longer---Angela.