Thank you to the people who responded so warmly and supportively.  Danee
and Linda, I followed your links over to the ADV forums and appreciate
the emotional support.  I actually already knew quite a bit about ADV
before this happened, but *living* with it is a whole 'nother story.
Danee, your post was so well written and sensitive.  I have saved it and
will refer to it when the time comes to "clean up" after the ferrets have
gone...hopefully that won't be for many, many years.  The ferrets now are
symptom-free.  As it says in Leese's Story on the ferretadv.com website,
"he doesn't know he's sick."  They don't know they're sick, and I'm not
going to be the one to tell them.  But when the time comes, I will know
not to battle the illness, and just to have my poor ferrets put down.  We
struggled for 2 1/2 weeks, trying everything to keep the one who died
alive...she went through so much suffering that was needless.  If I had
it to do over again I wouldn't have put her through that.  But when the
vet said that the test result *could* be a "false positive," I clung to
that hope.
 
The tests I did were Avecon QuickCheck tests, I used saliva.  I know
there's a margin of error, but since I did it on all three of them, I'm
going to assume I couldn't have gotten THREE false positives.  Had the
result been negative, then I was planning to take them to the vet for a
blood test to be sent to United for analysis. <sigh>  but now that won't
be necessary.
 
Laura, I want to send a special thank you for the link to buy parvocide.
I read about it in Danee's post and was just thinking "now where in the
heck am I going to get that?" when your post answered my question.  I
bought it, and yes I'll be careful using it, although my first thought is
to drench myself and everything in the house (including the ferrets) in
it in hopes that it will kill all the ADV in our house and in the ferrets
and we can just get over this.
 
I know, that won't work, but it's my fantasy.  I will be sure to take it
with me when I go to the vet.
 
I have to call the photographer and the local ferret shelter (who had
ferrets at the local PetSmart this past Sunday when I was there having my
ferrets pictures taken).  If I could do it over, I obviously wouldn't
have gone, but I really, truly believed that they didn't have it.  Since
I've never been to a ferret show and none of my friends have ferrets, I
truly believed that my ferrets couldn't possibly have caught it.  I
didn't take my ferrets into the little room where the shelter ferrets
were, but I had gone in there myself earlier in the day.  Plus, I let my
ferrets walk all over the store on their leashes.  I would give anything
to rewind back to Sunday and undo the terrible damage I may have done.
 
St.  Louis people: the PetSmart I'm talking about is the Brentwood
PetSmart, across from Target.
 
Depressed Mom
[Posted in FML issue 4491]