I took my dear sweet Elliott in for adrenal surgery on Wednesday, March
5th.  Everything evidentally went pretty well.  He had his left adrenal
removed, the right froze and a few nodules removed from his pancreas.
The vet said his blood sugar was at 54 before surgery.  She gave him a
shot of percorten and a steroid injection after surgery.  He went home
with me later that day.
 
He ate his chicken soup pretty good.  I didn't let him be with the others
that day.  He slept in a cage next to my bed with the pet taxi on top of
a heating pad, on low.  There was a towel in the bottom of the pet taxi
as well as he was in a "snuggle sack".  Through the night and on
Thursday, he continued eating pretty good...as long as I woke him and
offered the chicken soup.
 
As Thursday day went on, he began to lose interest in eating...and then
he started having a loose stool.  Called the vet and she said maybe it
was because of the steroid she gave him as well as the nutrical.  He
might be feeling kind of "puny" and not wanting to eat.  By evening, I
was force feeding him to get him to eat as well as forcing water down
him.  Got up a couple of times during the night and he had no interest
in anything.
 
Friday morning, I drove to the vet knowing he needed fluids.  Before I
left home, he was pretty alert, but was in bad need of fluids.  My trip
to the vet was 35-40 minutes later.  When I got there, he was close to
being in a coma.  They immediately started him on a IV for fluids and
antibiotics, gave him a shot of morphine and put him in an incubator.
The vet said she would monitor him closely, but wasn't sure he would make
it...although did look better than he did when he first got there.  She
said she would take him home with her that night.
 
His stomach was very bruised and was kind of purple.  She initially
thought that the one side of him looked almost burned.  I told her about
the heating pad and it had been checked often enough that I KNEW that
there was no burn from that and that was the only heat he was near.
His feet and tail seemed very cold to the touch before I left the house
and so had but some towels in the dryer for heat.  They weren't that hot
either as was only in the dryer for a very short while.
 
Well, at approximately 3:00 p.m.on Friday, March 7, Elliott crossed over
the bridge.  He was only 5 1/2 years old!  He had been needing surgery
for a while, but kept putting it off for fear of surgery.  It was such a
routine operation!  She said he woke up fast after surgery, walked around
the incubator and was doing terrific.
 
Our vet asked is she could re-open him & see if there was anything she
could find that may have caused his death.  NOTHING!  She thought maybe
it was a bacteria of some sort.  At first she thought maybe it was a
clotting problem or maybe a blood clot.  I had asked her when he was in
the incubator if it could possibly be an insulinoma problem.  She said
she really didn't think it was (but no blood test was done).
 
I feel so terribly guilty about sending him to his death!  So what if
he was losing hair!!!  At least he was alive.  He didn't know he was
supposed to have hair...and the others didn't care.  I didn't care...
just thought I would give him more time with us.  Now I will probably
never send another one for surgery again!
 
We lost Austin in June (he lived 2 years longer than he was supposed to
as he had a tumor on his head when we got him from the shelter).  We lost
Samson in August...who had his spleen removed and then it was discovered
that he had an aggressive lymphoma.  He died 14 days after surgery.
Aspen died in a terrible household accident in December...and now
Elliott!!!  This is 4 ferrets in 9 months.
 
My heart is breaking.  Later today I have to show the others Elliott so
they can have their closure.  We had picked him up from the vet earlier
today.
 
Does anyone have any possible answers to what happened to Elliott?  He
never was an overweight ferret.  Very long and lean.  Did I do something
wrong?  I was always so careful when picking him up as didn't want to
hurt his stitches.  He did get to run from one side of the room to the
other a couple of times.  His back legs didn't work too good, but thought
maybe it was because of pain in his stomach.  I know that there as no
guarantees when surgery is done.  I actually felt pretty comfortable with
this surgery as his skin looked a healthy pink underneath his thinning
hair.
 
I feel pretty confident in our vet as she does all the surgeries for our
local shelter.  One of the assistants said they do probably at least 8
surgeries of this sort a week.
 
Thanks for being here for me to express my grief.  It's hard to talk to
anyone as my children and mother and friends don't care and think I'm
crazy for loving ferrets as much as I do.  My husband tries but really
doesn't have my passion for ferrets.  I've told him often that if
something happened to me, they would ALL tell him to get rid of them.
He knows that I'm right, so he doesn't respond.
 
Thanks,
Connie
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[Posted in FML issue 4081]