From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2003-12-09 23:25:02 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] RE: Sudden Bad Fighting, Sickness???
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <1374822.1071012302369.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
A good many years one of the gentlest ferrets we've ever known got lymphoma affecting his R adrenal. One day when I was kneeling on the carpet cleaning something Hjalmar came up, wrapped my foreleg in his arms and clung, then sunk in his teeth as if he were mounting a female ferret and going for a neck hold, then tried to mate my leg.
He is the only one who reacted in such a way, and he behaved as if he was horrified when he realized that he had hurt me. He never did it again, either, even though he survived for 14 months with his illness, passing away well into his 8th year.
It was the first sign with him that something was wrong, but that was in the years when people had no real idea what to do for adrenal neoplasia, most vets and ferrets folks didn't even recognize adrenal neoplasia, and even a later ferret text book author didn't think in terms of possible surgery but she was the one who recgnized what was going on (though with lympho surgery would have been a mote point most likely anyway).
Surgery was eventually tried several months before he passed (It was on his right.) and did give him some extra quality time, and he was one of the first ferrets to have Florinef (tried experimentally on him when he was crashing and within hours he went from actively dying to obviously improving markedly) without the vet who thought of it knowing that Dr. Bock at that time was experimenting with Florinef about 2,000 miles away.
His other adrenal was atrophied, Back then Lysodren was being used experimentally and he had been on that and Pred. Now Lysodren is almost never used because it often doesn't work and sometimes when it does work it causes atrophy such as Hjalmie had.
Anyway, he was the only active mating male with adrenal neoplasia I can recall in our family.
A female here, Seven of Six, had an unusual behavior response. She lost two adrenal glands a few months apart (hyperplasia) but the right was grown into he Vena Cava so could only be debulked, then later she had enough tissue regrowth that we tried Lupron (which really helped her greatly). Her behavior would suddenly change with her grabbing the then youngest ferret (Sherman), holding him down, and then urinating on his head and shoulders.
When Warp had an adrenal growth (She was also a lympho patient) my toes became her "babies" and for a while I had to put up with them being groomed incessently and "stashed" in safe baby places.