From:
Angie George
Date: 2002-01-21 16:50:00 UTC
Subject: Our loss of Luna
This is rather lenghty and I apologize.
Our 10 month old female ferret, Luna began acting somewhat lethargic
and breathing heavier than usual so I immediately took her to our
vet who could only find a slightly enlarged spleen, but suspected an
infection. She gave her an antibiotic injection and I took her home.
The next morning I was not happy with how she still acted, couldn't
get a hold of my vet, so I took her to another vet who also
suspected a bacterial infection or kidney or bladder infection. She
administered fluids subcu, put her on baytril, drew blood and
collected urine. She found urine to be: 3+ protein, 3+ BC, 2+blood,
sg=1.03, and ph = 6. She phoned me a couple of days later expressing
that she was alarmed by the bloodwork and felt I should get her to a
specialist. I immediately drove 2 hrs. to the only vet I knew of.
(had never used before) He had received the bloodwork via email and
stated that it "was no good" and did not suspect any kind of
infection. He diagnosed a spleen which needed to be removed
immediately for fear of rupture based only on a physical exam. He
did no bloodwork and didn't do the surgery until 24 hrs. later. When
I picked her up the next day I was horrified at what I saw, she was
so weak, lethargic, and just plain sickly looking, much worse than
before. I took her home with instructions to feed her at least 25
cc's of citrical every 24 hrs. I also was instructed not to stay up
but to get some sleep. I ignored this last instruction and called as
soon as I got home with concerns that Luna could not move her back
end only to be told that this was normal because of the i.v. site. I
stayed up all night nursing her and called the vet asap the next
morning with concerns that she wasn't doing better. He felt I was
overreacting and that she was just weak after surgery. I took her to
the 2nd vet who was also horrified, called him and stated so and we
were instructed to get her to him asap. The 2nd vet administered
more fluids subcu and glucose based on his instruction and I took
her back (2hr. trip) He stated that he suspected an infection (but
not before?) and that he would put her back on fluids and that she
should be fine once her temp was back down. I received many phone
calls over the next 24 hrs. stating that her temp was down to normal
and she was doing better and could probably come home the next day.
The next day I received a call stating that she had passed away.
When we picked her up he told us that "we had a very sick ferret and
should bring the others asap to him for cancer screenings if we
didn't want to see this happen again". Here is the bloodwork from
the 2nd vet: creatinine--1.2, protein--7.5, albumin--5.4,
bilirubin--1.5, alkaline phosphatase--339, alt--444, ast--669,
cholestrol--303, hematocrit--48 (which he told us was very anemic
and it continued down to 36 after surgery), glucose--27,
insulin--153.8, phosphorus--23.1, potassium--6.6, chloride--84,
globulin--2.1. This vet told us that she was chronically ill upon
first seeing her however the first two vets make comments about very
good care by owner being obvious. I am curious to what anyone might
interpret from all of this. Luna's histopath which came back
mysteriously fast showed lymphosarcoma however the lab will not
discuss this with us upon the vet refusing to let them do so.
angie george
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