From:
"jbmccaughey"
Date: 2010-12-10 04:31:07 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Basil - suddenly going downhill
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Basil has passed. We brought her today for an exam with our regular vet who has the potential to do an emergency ultrasound as well.
Last night Basil was refusing food. I gave her a drop of Buprenorphine as per the vet to try to make her comfortable. I tried to get a bit of turkey baby food into her before her antibiotic and pred. When I got some turkey into her mouth she started dry heaving. I gave up and skipped her meds. She drank a little water off my husband's fingers.
This morning I woke to dry heaving again. She drank a little more water.
When we brought her in to the vet she lay flat on the table. The vet palpated her and said her spleen was lumpy and that her belly was now beginning to fill with fluid. Because of her apparent condition combined with low blood counts we decided to let her go.
I still really wanted to get some answers so we opted for a necropsy. The vet found the spleen filled with small grey-brown balls, either cancer or a severe infection but she was guessing it was likely cancer. She also found the remaining right adrenal was quite enlarged to 6mm x 1.2cm and wrapped around the vena cava. We opted not to do a biopsy on the contents of the spleen since we had enough info to confirm our decision. The vet said that because the blood is filtered by the spleen whatever it is could easily be distributed all over the body. Even if we knew what we had to do and attempted splenectomy and debulking the adrenal, her chances of survival would have been very slim and short-lived.
Thank you to everyone who replied to me privately. I'm so grateful for the info and opinions I received during such a difficult time.
Jaime
--- In ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com, "jbmccaughey" <JJMcCay@...> wrote:
>
> Basil's latest temp was 102.2 on day 3 of Clavamox but we're doing a urine culture to see if it actually grows bacteria, that may take until this Thursday to Saturday to get results.
>
> We're planning on doing an ultrasound on Thursday.
...
> [To see the rest of this series of posts:
> http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/message/14109
> and click the words
> expand messages
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