>we are passing around a nasty intestinal bug at my house.  Is there a
>chance my ferts will get it?
 
First: if just intestinal it's not influenza.  Influenza is primarily
a respiratory disease; the other things that can happen with it are
secondary.  There is a lot of confusion out there about this; if it's
not respiratory then it is not flu.  Ferrets do catch influenza.
 
Sometimes a human will have an influenza rather mildly, either due to it
being a mild strain or due to having partial immunity and in this case it
may seem like a cold.  Because they can catch influenza and because they
can catch some sinus infections that we get it pays to be careful even if
you think that it is a cold only.
 
Second: there are a number of human diseases they don't catch, but they do
get some GI tract viruses.  We have one in our household right now that
was brought in by a Thanksgiving guest.  Glueball (who looks and kisses
like Linda's Belle did) got it first.  then I did, then Steve, and now
Ashling.  We are always careful about doing many things to reduce exposure
but this one is apparently decently contagious even with logical
precautions.
 
>done on Buzz but from his symptoms the vet believed it was mini strokes
>from blood clots
 
Just getting a tad technical here since I've had vets correct me in the
past when I called such results of thrown clots "strokes"; these are
actually correctly called "thromboses".  Strokes are different.  For those
who don't know: thromboses have several possible causes, esp.  either
cardiomyopathy, or kidney disease.  Just another reason (beyond improving
quality and quantity of life) to treat these diseases; that tends to
delay time at which such things occur, though they do happen late in such
diseases -- we've had it happen here in an 8 and 1/2 years old girl with
late stage cardiomyopathy with ventricular bigemini, and with a six (I
think) years old boy with late stage kidney failure brought on originally
by damage from three months of a particularly nasty strain of ECE (though
we were able to give him good time between).  Thrown clots, BTW, can land
in other areas than the brain, such as major legs veins, a kidney, a lung,
etc.  At times they dissolve successfully, and when it's a place like the
leg that can be safely massaged a lot of that helps this process.  It's
hard to tell at first just how extreme the long term results of a clot
thrown to the brain may be: a ferret can be on its death-bed and require
several days of round-the-clock intensive medical care yet wind up with
only a tiny bit of limb control loss, or it may be too late.  No way to
know early on.
 
Thanks to the several people who wrote saying that they had blazes or
pandas (true, not wanna-bes) who made it past 6 and 1/2.  It's good to
finally have someone reply with some after years of asking.  So, it's
possible!  Whew!  The proportions simply are not possible to access
accurately with this sort of sampling, nor is it possible to remove things
that can cause earlier deaths from treatable causes caught late such as
people (ferret folks or vets) who are not well versed in ferrets, but it's
good to know that it has actually happened.  For years no one wrote back
about any which had, so it's marvelous to read of some attaining normal
lifespans like 7 and even 8 years.  Wonderful!  Normal ages in at least
some, so that means it may be a false alarm, or perhaps full life is
something less common but possible for them...
 
With Thanksgiving, the virus, and other obligations i have to play
catch-up with FHL (Ferret Health List) cross-posts so as Bill and I have
agreed I'll send some soon again and then he'll work them in as space
permits.
[Posted in FML issue 3623]