From:
"Claire van den Broek"
Date: 2008-09-22 23:36:12 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: What could my baby have died of?
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Dear all,
Thank you for your responses and sympathy, I really appreciate it, and
it helps to know that there are others who share a similar grief, and
understand how hard it is to lose your baby.
Lymphoma seems like a very possible candidate from what I heard. I
don't think they tried to drain his bladder, I'm not sure when he
stopped urinating, it may not have been until the next day, when he
was already rapidly deteriorating. That's also when he started
grinding his teeth constantly, so he was clearly in pain by then. We
could not let him suffer longer just for a slim chance of recovery, we
felt it would be unfair to a little creature who cannot understand the
concept of future relief, but only feel pain now.
If this helps, someone mentioned an enlarged spleen. Well, I just
remembered some details of the last time that he had been sick (more
so than ever before), which had not seemed that relevant before, I had
forgotten almost entirely about them.
This was in September (so 5 months earlier), when he had been in
boarding. He went in perfectly healthy, but two days before we came
back, the boarding lady said he had a sudden hypoglycemic crash, he
went into shock, etc. She is very experienced with ferrets, and had
given him some sugar or whatever right away to get him out of the
shock. He then had some weakness in the legs. He never dragged them,
but he would stand still, stare, and then suddenly fall over
(especially his back half), and then get back up again and act
normally for ten minutes or so. He also occasionally ground his teeth.
We took him to the vet right away, and we could not figure out what
was wrong, because the hypoglycemia and weakness in his hind parts is
typical of insulinoma, yet he had shown zero symptoms before we had
left, and we all thought this was far too sudden, to go from no
symptoms, to serious advanced insulinoma. We figured he may have
stopped eating, because he often got upset and lost weight when we're
away, and the vet suspected he had a stomach ulcer, which would've
also made him stop eating. The only other thing the vet found was an
enormous, enlarged spleen. Nothing strange on the blood test, other
than hypoglycemia.
The vet gave him medication for a likely stomach ulcer, and
painkillers, and he quickly improved (in a few days he went back to
normal), and a few weeks later, when the vet checked again, his spleen
was perfectly normal.
Between early october, and mid february, none of these symptoms
returned, he showed no weakness whatsoever in his legs anymore, he was
active, ate and drank well, and was basically back to his same old
self. We agreed with the vet that this did not seem to match typical
insulinoma.
Then suddenly, the events described in my other post happened. 36
hours later we had to put him to sleep, as he was getting worse, too
sick to get surgery, and was in pain.
So perhaps I SHOULD connect these events and conclude he may have had
insulinoma? Could it have been hidden? Came to the foreground in
september due to stress, then disappeared again and remained hidden
until the sudden episode? Can it really happen that quickly? Or were
these episodes unrelated?
Thank you for your help!
Claire
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