Hi all!  I very rarely post here, so you probably won't remember me, but
I've been on the list for I think 3 years now (as
[log in to unmask]).
 
Anyway, sad news, our first baby, Andre, past over the rainbow bridge a few
weeks ago.
 
I hadn't planned on posting, but I noticed someone posted that their ferret
was fine one day and vomiting the next, and showed no blockage on an x-ray.
Andre's sad situation may help others...
 
On Thursday night, 12/7/00, at about 5:30PM, Andre was happily playing,
wrestling with us, and doing normal ferret-y things.  By 6PM, we planned
on going out for the evening, and went to hunt down the fuzzies.  We found
Andre sleeping in a blanket in the middle of the room - not his usual
place.  He was unusually lethargic, but we weren't too concerned.  As soon
as we put him in his cage, he started vomiting.  We knew something was
wrong, since he has a cast iron stomach and NEVER gets sick.  He continued
to vomit all night, and was so lethargic that he even fell asleep in his
water bowl several times throught he night.
 
By morning, things had not improved.  We took him to our vet.  She is an
excellent ferret vet who owns fuzzies herself.  She did some x-rays and
blood work, but nothing major showed up.  The x-ray showned that he might
have SOMETHING in his stomach, which would be unusual since he had been
throwning up all night.  He was so lethargic that he just layed on the
x-ray table without moving.  She tried to offer him some canned food to
see if he could eat, and just the smell made him sick.  Thinking he may
have eaten something he shouldn't, our vet did an exploratory surgery.
 
As it turns out, all the x-ray saw was a bit of fat.  We are lucky it did,
because otherwise we might never have done the surgery.  As it turns out,
Andre had advanced Lymphosarcoma.  There were tumors all over inside his
intestines.  One of them had ruptured, and he had bowel fluid seeping into
his stomach cavity.
 
Andre, being the iron strong boy he was, survived the surgery itself,
though the outlook didn't look good.  He held on through incredible pain
for four days, and past in the night on 12/12.
 
Andre was only 2 and a half years old.  We never expected anything like
this.
 
It was a freak illness, and not one we could have prevented.  He showed no
other signs at all of being anything but normal, until it was too late.
The ONLY advanced warning we had was that about a month before this, he
decieded he didn't like banana chips any more (very strange, he was a treat
monster) and a week before he started sleeping in unusual places.
 
Exploratory surgery is not something you'd normally do if your ferret is
vomiting, but in this case, it was the only way we would have found out
what was wrong.
 
Anyway, thank you for reading, if you would like to visit Andre's site,
I'd be overjoyed. :)  He has some adorable pictures up.
 
http://www.geocities.com/hfshcbank/ferrets/andre.html
 
I've got some anger at life in general, and Marshall Farms.  A baby so
young just shouldn't die of cancer, in my mind.
[Posted in FML issue 3302]