From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2008-05-07 16:19:03 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: vomitting, diarrhea, weight loss, skin lesions, left leg weakness
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
I noticed that in your subject line you mention left leg weakness.
There are not a lot of things which will cause one leg to specifically
become extremely weak of immobile. Two things pretty often seen
on that score:
injury
some malignancies including lymphoma of the spinal cord
thrown clot (thrombosis) which are secondary to things like
lymphoma, kidney disease, liver disease, but to usually heart
disease (Remember that if it is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy then
it is likely to need an ultrasound to be found but a chest x-ray can
spot dilative and some cases of hypertrophic. Luckily, hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy appears to be more rare; we've had only one with
that in over a quarter century with ferrets in the family.)
There are several things the sores could be, including but not limited to:
mast cell tumors
http://www.afip.org/consultation/vetpath/ferrets/Mast/mastcell.html
pemphigus
See: http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YG119
other skin growths
parasite damage
etc.
Now, about the food:
1. Did you keep the expiration date from the bag? Companies
which use more gentle preservatives like Vitamin E have food that
goes bad more easily than those with some other preservatives.
2. If the bag develops a defect insects can get in. Some can get into
pretty much any container, too, due to being extremely tiny.
3. Check with TF to see if they had any recalls
about the time that your food would have been manufactured.
They are very good about doing recalls when there is any question.
4. Check with TF on ingredients.
Here is where you can find the contact info to check:
http://www.performancefoodsinc.net/
including
http://www.performancefoodsinc.net/index.php?q=contact
It is so easy to forget to keep expiration dates when food is moved.
We have made that mistake, too.
The grinding you mention indicates nausea. Among the things that
can cause that are ulcers
and those also produce tarry stools (tend to be secondary to
infections such as helicobacter infections, lymphoma, perforation,
foreign body ingested, coccidia infection (which also might account
for the diarrhea if either genus is present -- but the
vet needs to check multiple day's specimens for BOTH genera that
ferrets get.
See: http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YPG616 and
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/SG17634 and
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YPG590
and may be secondary to some other things.
Insulinoma is among the things that can produce nausea all by it's
lonesome.
On a personal note:
I know what you mean about how life gets terribly hard some times. My
husband and I seem to finally be reaching the end of some really tough
years when life really sat on us with over a half dozen terrible sicknesses
and deaths in our families, about half that number among friends, illnesses
of our own, and so on. Worrying about a loved four footed family member
is even harder during times when life is coming down hard on a person,
but all things end in their own time, including such demands in one's life and
then there is happiness in life once again. Sometimes the bad things just
clump for a little while, but over the long haul it is just a little while, so give
yourself the gift of time.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
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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