From:
Caitlyn Martin
Date: 2002-02-25 08:46:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Adrenal survey
Hi, Natasha, and everyone else,
> Very interesting -- and disheartening! -- to see that 42% of ferrets
> treated had symptoms that never subsided. My little old girl, Squirt,
> had two surgeries about three months apart, and her symptoms never
> went away until we began lupron. :-(
Two of our ferrets, Romana and Ryo-Ohki, are in that 42%.
Ryo-Ohki ended up with tumors in her kidneys, liver, and lymph nodes.
Assuming this was metastasis, it's a very rare situation indeed. The
other possibility is another, unrelated disease (i.e.: lymphoma).
Either way, she didn't ever get enough time to recover before other,
serious problems set in. She did start recovering for a week or two
after surgery, so I have to believe that the surgery was successful.
Romana had adrenal surgery in late November. She never had hair loss,
but did lose weight and have a swollen vulva. She gained weight after
surgery but her vulva remained swollen. She has since started losing
weight again, so our vet now suspects a right adrenal tumor. If she has
a second surgery it is likely that her symptoms will subside. We just
don't know yet, which wasn't a valid survey answer.
Pertwee is the only other one I have who took more than three months.
He is bilateral, and had an unrelated kideny problem. Once the diseased
kidney was removed (his third surgery) all of his symptoms, both adrenal
and non-adrenal, began to clear up quickly. It took him a year to
regrow a full coat of hair, minus one spot at the base of his tail that
still has just wispy strands. He's had an ultrasound in the last few
months (another unrelated problem) so his belly isn't very hairy either,
but his hair tends to come back at coat changes, so I expect that to
fill in this spring. However, the marked aggressiveness and biting we
saw when he had adrenal is long gone, and he did get back up to a nice,
normal body weight until other issues hit recently. I don't really
consider him to have adrenal symptoms any more.
A survey just doesn't leave room for explanations, though I do consider
what Mike is doing valuable information.
All the best,
Caity and the notorious nine