From:
ferretsonly
Date: 2002-03-30 22:34:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Congenital Heart Defects
> I think Minnie may be a lucky case, but wanted to share my
> story because I recall how freaked we were when the murmur
> was first heard
Ditto with Cinnamon. Her previous owner had her disgnosed with a
heart murmur when Cinnamon was 4 months old. She came into my life at
the age of 3 years and went on enacard at age 4 years when she
started to have problems from the murmur. She lived to be 7.5 years
old and also suffered from probable IBD (well controlled with imuran
and z/d food) and insulinoma (which was difficult to control even
with 0.7 cc's proglycem BID and not a candidate for surgery).
On the other hand, Baretta died at 14 months from apparent congenital
cardiomyopathy (the pathologist didn't specifically say "congenital"
but it was cardiomyopathy). I had noticed that Baretta's breathing
was labored but since he was always ballistic, I never gave it a
second thought (I was a pretty novice owner then).
In early August 94, he started coughing. I took him in to my previous
vet who diagnosed him with a respiratory problem. He was put on
antibiotics. After about a week, he wasn't better and, in fact,
seemed worse. I took him to a veterinary teaching university where
they took X-rays. They immediately diagnosed cardiomyopathy. They
asked me to leave Baretta with them for about an hour while they
located a cardiologist.
Baretta was pretty sick so we took him with us for the hour rather
than leaving him with strangers. I called my vet at home to tell him
the diagnosis. While I was talking to my vet, Baretta turned blue and
died in my arms. Nothing could have been done. We left his body with
the teaching university so the vet students could benefit from his
untimely death. (This is a great way for vet students to learn about
ferrets!)
-Carla