From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2002-08-20 17:01:07 UTC
Subject: Bleeding out from right adrenal?
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <28246146.1029866235355.JavaMail.nobody@strontium>
I've been searching the archives again. I found a few statements about
eventual death from malignancies in the right adrenal gland. The gist was
that it is more common for a ferret with a LARGE right adrenal tumor to
bleed to death from rupture/necrosis than it was to have the ferret
actually die from widely spread metastatic tumors in other organs.
The question is: For this bleeding out to occur, does the right adrenal
tumor really need to be *large*? My old, multi-problem guy Mojo has some
free blood in his abdomen (aspirated during an ultrasound). He also has a
known right adrenal problem, and during this ultrasound, he had a series
of *small* growths going down the vena cava. Nothing big, nothing that
looks like it is occluding the cava, but definitely several small growths
in that area. Wonder if they are putting little arms out into the cava
and somehow causing this bleeding...
I don't want to make this post long with an incredibly complicated case
history, but for a variety of reasons, I don't really want Mojo to have
surgery, and that would be the only way to know for sure what is going on.
So, this will almost surely be the end of him. His body is compensating
for the bloodloss for now, but obviously this is really bad. The
ultrasound didn't show any obvious bleeding tumors like a hemangiosarcoma,
nor did it show a ruptured spleen or anything like that.
We're just curious if these smaller lesions in that area are known to
cause bleeding, or if, as stated previously, right adrenal
are known to bleed only when they get huge.
Thanks for any help. I'll send a message about where the blood was coming
from after the sad day when we will be able to know for sure. :(
Best wishes,
-Pam S.