From:
"ferretgm"
Date: 2009-08-25 14:17:40 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Fia: Interestingly, not lymphoma
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Fia had a large lymph node under one arm in January 2009. She was about 14 months old. A biopsy showed no signs of lymphoma.
She seemed fine until mid-May, when she abruptly lost about half her body weight, despite eating and eliminating well. I put her on carnivore care and the weight came back up, although she remained lethargic; frankly, I assumed that the pathologist missed the lymphoma in the node, and given her age, thought it was most likely to be juvenile lymphoma.
A friend took her back to our specialty vet in KC, who operated and took biopsies, which were sent to a specialty pathology center. On examination, all the lymph nodes in the abdomen were quite enlarged, and there was pancreatic inflammation.
The vet thinks that she has severe antigenic stimulation, likely resulting from a significant bacterial infection. The treatment is several months of amoxi, plus pred for the inflamation/immune system plus famotidine to protect her stomach.
It boggles my mind that she could have been ill and I not know it, but we are very relieved that she does not have lymphoma. I am posting because when I did research, I could never find any cases where the single enlarged under-arm lymph node in a very young ferret was anything other than lymphoma, and thought it might be useful for others to know that there are other possibilities.
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