From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2011-05-08 20:40:36 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Telemna update; she is gone
To: fhl <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
Last night about 7 Telemna apparently threw a clot to her brain, or at least the symptoms were consistent with that: twist neck, one sided weakness. It appeared that she would be able to pass at home since she was not in discomfort, but her brain, heart, and lungs were too strong for that. For the first 8 hours or so she willingly drank soup. After that she just wanted to try to keep her mouth a little moist. We'd realized by about the 18 hours point that she might need a mercy shot because we didn't want her to become too dehydrated in case of pain beginning. After 19 hours she began to show some yellow on her skin and since that boded the risk of pain for her we then drove to get her the mercy shot.
She presented like her platelet problems had an immune mediated cause, but she also was dealing with a huge right adrenal growth so over-production of estrogen is also a possibility. It is even possible that she wound up dealing with both.
You can read the meds used in past posts under two or three other subject lines by using the separate FHL Archives and looking for posts containing Telemna in the message body to learn about things like the antiestrogenic chemo drug used, transfusion, steroids used, etc. If her body had responded she would have had options but with it not doing so marrow transplant and surgery were both out, the latter also to a lesser extent because of possible heart disease.
Emmy had a music fest for most of her final 19 hours. Many here know that she played piano almost every day, often for as long as 20 minutes (but hated to be filmed -- and seemed to hear the three cameras tried -- though we managed to get this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayJ-WvVaRnE
which has even been used by a neurology professor studying the neurology of music as a demonstration of musical thought outside humanity). Telemna could also copy the first 8 notes or so of any piece of music she heard enough times in sequence but we could not always pick out which ones she would like well enough to do that, though Chariots of Fire is one. Her range of appreciated pieces went from hard rock to a little folk (Peter, Paul and Mary), almost anything sung by Liza Minnelli, to a lot of 60s pop, and on to some rap. She loved music enough that she could go into a trance like state, so last night to distract our worries a bit and hopefully distract her we put on MuLan and she pulled near the speakers and was so entranced that afterward we both set up Rodgers and Hammerstein stations on Pandora for our computers since there are great similarities in their music to that in MuLan. Then we went into shifts holding her and tending to her while she got music through Pa
ndora till neither of us could sleep despite little rest.
Please, remember that the FHL has a rule that sympathy messages without new health content should not be sent to the list. That is to make it easier for vets to sort through messages to help people. If there are people with more info on the sorts of platelet problems she had or other health problems she had, though, I know that everyone would like to learn since severe platelet problems pose such a very hard health difficulty to run up against. If this leads to someone else later having needed information to help or save a ferret then something good will come of it.
Hug a ferret for us today, please.
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
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
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