From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-01-12 20:03:04 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] adrenals and clumping
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <5116426.1105560184693.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Author wrote:
>my vet used to think I was nuts when I would bring in a jill with absolutely no >physical signs of adrenals and tell him I wanted to have surgery done because this
LOL! Yes, we've been there, too. What we always wound up doing was waiting about a month on vet's request until there were more signs (so that there would be no trouble finding the right one) with one exception. Until recent years I used to be very good at smelling malignancies even very early on. I'd learned the smell during my mother's cancer and could spot it. That came in very handy for ferret health. Age decreases the sense of smell though and that is a very hard on to pick up on early in illness so even though I can still tease apart some recipes by smell I can't do that any more.
Not all of the ferrets who had adrenal neoplasia got the smell. I guess they would have over time but if other signs showed up first the surgery got done.
We find it more of a muskiness with a bit of note of urine to it.
One thing that is interesting is that we have some family members who are allergic to whole male musk. When we had a male who had lympho based in his adrenal (Has to be over 15 years ago now) that was a situation where he of course continued to progress, and two family members began reacting to him as they do the whole males but with milder reactions.
Now, something to always remember is that some ferrets are just ALWAYS stinkier than others and no two ferrets smell alike. (Try blind folding yourself sometime and you'll see that you can tell you and being held up for you to sniff.) So, look for a CHANGE in smell.
Again, not all ferrets have all signs of adrenal disease so never figure that you have to wait to wait for some specific symptom to suspect adrenal if there are other reasons to suspect it is there.