From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2007-02-15 17:07:01 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Mystery lump...need help identifying UPDATE
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
A huge spleen can feel like a human suddenly carrying around an added 20 or 30 pounds
in weights which would slow most people down.
We've had ferrets whose spleen decreased when the infections causing them were treated
well enough, but we have also had others (2?, 3?) who were best with their spleens out.
The vets tended to pat them gently to get much of the blood in them circulating and then
removed them. There were no adverse effects except having to carefully make sure they
were not too active too soon because they felt so much better without the impositions the
spleen were causing.
One of the very deformed ones we took in (back when we could afford the care required to
take in ones burdened with serious congenital malformations) was a severely intellectually
impaired female (who didn't even comprehend most of ferret body language) who looked
rather like a male, had asthma, had multiple deformations, had achondroplastic dwarfism,
had arthritis, etc. In her last half year she suddenly developed multiple separate
potentially fatal conditions simultaneously as well as several separate non-fatal ones.
Despite two separate heart conditions (cardiomyopathy and a heart tumor) she needed to
have liver cysts and some insulinomae removed to give her a shot at some added quality
time because the cysts would have been fatal within days and the pancreatic tumors were
out of control with grande mal convulsions. If it had been safe enough to do so her spleen
also would have come out but it just would have been too risky to keep her under any
longer.
The surgery gave her what she needed, but her spleen stayed in.
So, we learned how to do a gentle massage that served a combination of functions; it
helped reduce the size of the spleen temporarily and it helped move her bowels along her
ascending colon, transverse colon and then down the upper portion of her descending
colon because the size of her spleen did interfere with her ability to defecate. Ruffle got
many other massages every day already to help soothe her muscular problems so she was
cooperative from the start and was greatly helped by this approach.
You can describe that to your vet or show your vet the description, see if your vet feels
that in your ferret's spleen could be safely massaged (a must to check first), and then have
your vet show you how to do that.
Yes, do monitor bathroom habits.
If the ferret is a surgical candidate and treating the underlying infection does not take the
splenic size down enough talk with your vet about surgery to remove the spleen, mostly to
return quality to life for the ferret. Just be really sure to keep activity way down for the
first 10 days to 2 weeks afterward; no running, no climbing, etc. We have had some
ferrets with assorted surgeries who felt so good afterward that if they didn't have some
Torb syringes come home with us for pain they would have had them to keep the ferrets
more quiet.
--- In ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com, "rocknroll_songbird" <rocknroll_songbird@...>
wrote:
>
> Summer had been well despite the enlarged spleen but yesterday and
> today she hasn't run and played quite as much. Sometimes she stops
> and "speed bumps" during playtime. Her food/water consumption has
> been normal but I was worrying that if her spleen gets too large it
> could effect her bowel movements (make it difficult for her or make
> her unable to). Is this possible or do I not need to worry?
> Should she go back to the vet for more tests? For today everyone is
> going in separate cages to monitor food/bathroom habits.
>
> Thanks
> ~Emily and the feez
>
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