From:
"sukiedaviscrandall"
Date: 2010-02-12 19:06:32 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Ear Infection or something else
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Besides neck injury or neck illness, brain infection, or inner ear
infection, there is also the chance of a thrombosis.
These are thrown clots, but as you will see in posts in the separate
FHL archives from world-renowned ferret veterinary pathologist,
Dr. Bruce Williams, some vets just call this type of brain injury a
"stroke" to help people understand even though, as he explains, they
are not true strokes.
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
Now, the thing about thromboses is that something causes them to
happen and some of the causes have treatments that can help. The
most common cause is heart disease, especially cardiomyopathy.
Two other causes that are not unusual are kidney disease and
lymphoma.
Some ferrets only throw one clot and never do it again. That was the
case for our Spot who had kidney damage from an especially hard time
with ECE despite regular sub-cu. (In his case perhaps he should have
spent a decent amount of time on IV.) His was extreme. We found him
suddenly comatose and had to take him back and forth between the
vet hospital we used for daytime care and an emergency hospital for
full nighttime monitoring for a number of days before he came around
in the wee hours one morning at the emergency hospital. He needed
a lot of rehab at home but wound up with just one foot slightly impaired.
His was thrown to his brain, BTW, but he recovered well.
A clot can land pretty well anywhere. When it hits an arterial junction that
serves the legs both legs are affected; that is a saddle thrombosis. It
can land in an organ and then if bad enough it can kill that organ. Meltdown,
who had dilated cardiomyopathy with ventricular bigemini (and some
trigeminis) threw one to a kidney which destroyed the kidney. We gave it a
day with hopes that the kidney would survive but it did not and the next day
she threw another, this time to her brain with the same symptoms as you
are seeing. The combination was too much for her to survive and a mercy
shot was used. By that point, we'd been treating her heart for a year and half.
She had thrown one thrombus earlier that went to her leg but she recovered
fine from that.
So, there is a range of possible causes.
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.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
HAPPY: http://www.6footsix.com/my_weblog/2010/01/high-fives-for-happiness.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
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