From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2007-04-09 16:25:28 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: sudden weight gain/risks of exploratories
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
--- In ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com,
Debbie Hunton <reynapaubi@...> wrote:
> What I'm really asking about are those
>times when a ferret has some medical issue
>(diarreha, weight gain, whatever) that no
>cause could be diagnosed through non-surgical,
>although those diagnostic approaches have
>been tried (blood work, x-ray, ultrasound).
Well, there is weight gain and then there is weight gain.
Some of it involves unusual fat deposition -- a reason
to think about adrenal disease so it could pay to go in
and look for that.
Some of it involves fluid and if that is the case but the
there is no heart disease found by imaging then there
are reasons to look for possible malignancies, kidney
disease, or liver disease -- in each case hoping to jump
fast enough to provide a cure.
Some of it involves a huge spleen which isn't responding
to antibiotics.
There are yet other things to look for.
Diarrhea has many cause and some, ex. eosinophylic
gastroenteritis need a biopsy from specific internal tissues
to be diagnosed and properly approached, whereas others,
ex. a furball in the stomach that is not yet huge need to
come out before worse can occur.
Sometimes there can be serious causes which need to be
jumped on fast but the only way to know they are there is
to go in. (And often enough those serious causes are present.)
> If the ferret is acting normally (eating, drinking,
>pooping, peeing, playing) except for the
>one issue that has triggered the vet visits and tests,
>do you do exploratory surgery?
Well, chronic diarrhea is not normal.
If I recall right the post which began this conversation
is one that was misunderstood. In that case there was
a serious enough symptom but -- as ferrets often do --
the ferret was hiding just how extreme the illness was
because the individual had a cystic liver which can rapidly
become fatal.
> And if you have, did the vet get in there and
>find such serious problems that they didn't
>wake the ferret from the surgery?
We had one who had been hiding lymphoma. The vet
closed her up, gave her a huge amount of pain meds so
that we could say goodbye with her knowing we were
there and then she left us.
Usually, though, such surgeries have been a complete
win for our animals, probably ONLY because we read
enough to be able to spot most things pretty early on so
the surgeries have a lot of effect.
I think how well such surgeries work out does depend a
lot on how timely the vet care is, so while a good bit boils
down to quality of vet care a hefty chunk depends on the
animal's family spotting the problem early enough and
getting to the vet rapidly.
One thing that I think will eventually help ferrets will be
when there are more ferret knowledgeable vets because
long drives tend to induce people to not follow-up quite as
readily as they would with a knowledgeable vet more handy.
Sukie (not a vet)
Current FHL address:
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Recommended ferret health links:
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http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
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