From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2009-03-24 23:29:45 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] thinking about types of adrenal growths that don't behave like adrenal growths
To: fhl <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
We have a six year old who will be in
surgery possibly this week or more likely
next week who might have something totally
different going on, might simply be someone
who has an aberrant response to Lupron, as
in having everything worsen with Lupron and
worsen more with higher doses -- and doing
better without it, or who might have a
non-standard form of adrenal growth. The
TN Panel has never shown the adrenal hormonal
changes seen with adrenal growths for her.
Ultrasound shows a possibly slightly enlarged R
adrenal and a string of strange nodes (which have
been monitored for over a year now), and she has
no indications of having lymphoma.
Now, I know that teratomas that are located in an
adrenal do NOT behave like standard adrenal
disease, also that they can occur in lymph nodes.
They can fail to look like adrenal disease in
hormonal tests and hormonal treatments won't
affect them. They are incredibly rare, though --
really rare. They can also look horrid, but are
actually often benign so if considered beforehand
as a possibility there is less chance of someone just
closing the ferret up and instead doing the needed
removal.
Are there other adrenal growths which behave very
differently from typical adrenal growths? In what ways?
Of course, she may have a completely unexpected
surprise in there, but so far everything is coming up
empty and the infection she has with her vulva is
really a problem for her recently, so she has to be
eyeballed in an exploratory and pathology done,
obviously. This has been a slow process, BTW,
very slow, just recently getting this bad.
We've already had scoping and yet another
ultrasound. There is not a fistula from an infected
anal gland, and despite it looking like there is a bite
or cyst in the vulva there does not seem to be once
it is scoped. A culture is underway, too.
A teratoma actually might fit from some features,
but the chances of that rare adrenal tumor type
being present are very low simply because it is so
rare...
(Teratomas are so called "monster tumors" in which
something that should not be in a location grows
there, so there may be skin, fur, bone, sometimes
neural tissue just growing where it should not. I
read a speculation a while back that they might
involve not full stem cells (which can develop into
anything) but perhaps crest stem cells (which can
develop only into the things that specific type of
early fetal tissue crest can develop into -- a hold
over from the first days of a fetus before anything
as complex as organs, skin, etc.) but I have not read
up on teratomae recently so need to do that, too.)
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/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:ferrethealth-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:ferrethealth-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ferrethealth-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/