Sorry.  Apparently I didn't word the ancient history well.  Hjalmar had
already had surgery, which took one adrenal, but the other adrenal was
atrophied from the Lysodren, so he went into Addisons which happens when
there are not enough adrenal products to sustain life.  The Florinef
saved his life.
 
When a ferret is not a surgical candidate there are approaches which
are being tried.  The best known and usually best acting is Lupron,
but you'll find others if you pull up the Ferret Health List
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
and its archives
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/
since the specific questions arising are about non-surgical approaches
for compromised individuals.
 
Quick reminder: the idea of feeding dead baby mice or chicks to ferrets
is based on hypotheses, so it may pan out or it may not in terms of
health.  For instance, in one of many discussions on this topic there
didn't seem to be differences in longevity between kibble diets and whole
animal diets, BUT the samples are too small to know anything definitely.
We use kibble ourselves, but others won't and it's just not something
that has enough data behind it in either case to get upset about in terms
of ferret health issues.  The big thing is just to remember that until
final data is in even a hypothesis that looks like it might have good
foundation could still fail on study, so when folks go with their choices
they need to just remember to not treat something unproven as if it had
been.
 
Poofs: not much to them -- just a bit skunky but it is mild and
dissipates rapidly.  Onced Steve fogot to put away his roller skiis and
he stepped on one.  At that point we lived in a place with wooden floors
and off he went, arms flailing trying to balance, headed straight for
Tandy.  Did she run?  Did she scream?  Nope, she turned around and
poofed!  Steve had to fall to not hit her.
[Posted in FML issue 3937]