Dear Sara:
 
>We recently had a 3 year old female ferret turned into the shelter.  She
>had an adrenal tumor frozen on July 18 of last year, and she has a
>slightly swollen vulva now.  Should the symptoms have subsided by now?
>Or is this likely to be a recurrence or the other gland acting up?
 
Yes, I believe that six months after surgery, all clinical signs should
be gone if the surgery was a total success.  There are two possibilities
here - that the other adrenal gland has a functional lesion (approximately
15% of adrenal cases are bilateral), or that the previous adrenal was not
completely removed.  Without knowing what type of tumor was removed - it
could either be that a benign tumor was incompletely frozen, or that a
malignant tumor was incompletely removed and has shown regrowth.
 
It looks as if that another surgery may be in the offing - let's do it
early while she is an excellent candidate.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, dVM
[Posted in FML issue 3300]