William Pelle ???? - June 13, 2007 Cause of death--advanced adrenal
disease complications

William was a sweet DEW adopted by Melissa Pelle in November of 2006.
He had been found a few weeks before running down a street in Dunellen,
NJ. His coat was yellowish and coarse. We hoped with better nutrition,
it would improve.

He soon fit in with Melissa's other two ferrets. He was a sweet
boy--not a kisser, but loved to be cuddled, and never tried to bite
anyone, even in spite of being abandoned.

He didn't have any of the routine signs of adrenal. He didn't really
have hair loss, it was just starting to get thin. His hair was coarse
when she got him in November, but frequently that is caused by crappy
food. And it's been my experience that MOST people who dump pets don't
really care enough about them to give them the good stuff. He didn't
have any problems urinating either. The main thing that clued me into
having him tested for adrenal was his behavior. He started sucking on
the ears of her female until they were red and swollen. He was starting
to drag her around during playtime. He started to get a little more
aggressive towards the other male. The other thing I noticed was he
started to get a more acrid smell to the oil on the coat. By the time
he was taken in for surgery, he had rings of excess oil around his
eyes, like a male ferret gets while he is in season.

He was tested using the Tennessee panel, and was found to definitely
be adrenal. He came through the surgery just fine, and we went to get
him on Wednesday night. When they went to get William out of the cage
and put him into the carrier, he had just passed away. Dr Kim felt
terrible. He did a post-mortem, and let me watch (Melissa couldn't).
Here's what happened.

Apparently, the adrenal disease was MUCH more advanced than anyone
knew. The growth was the size of a large grape (usually it's the size
of a pea). When it's that far gone, the ferret's system is flooded with
adrenaline. It prevented his blood from clotting. The staples that Dr
Kim had put in had held fine, but he had slowly oozed blood out of
small blood vessels in the fat around the adrenal gland. Because his
blood didn't clot, he just slowly bled out. His abdomen was full of
unclotted blood.

Hindsight is 20/20; we should have asked to see him as soon as they
told us that he had tried to bite a vet tech. William had never bitten
anyone in his life--even after being abandoned in the street. Biting
was very uncharacteristic for him. He probably had stroked out at that
point from loss of blood and thus was acting weird. We might not have
been able to save him, but at least she may have been able to say
goodbye while he was still "there."

In a way, I'm glad that he passed away there. This way at least we know
what happened. If she had taken him home and he had died there, she
would have felt terrible--thinking that maybe she had done something
wrong. And if we hadn't taken him for the surgery, the lack of clotting
could have killed him at home just from a good bump when jumping down
from something. He could have bled out from a simple bruise, and she
would never have known what killed him. I didn't know about the excess
hormones from adrenal disease causing the blood to stop clotting. *Just
another reason to take a ferret in and address adrenal as soon as
possible.*

I'm posting this to the FML in his obituary, so that others can benefit
from William's experience.

At least we know that the last seven months of his life were happy ones
with good food, good friends, and a nice place to live.

We usually decide what color wings our Bridge Angels have. His are
beautiful pure white feather wings. They go with the pure white soft
coat that he deserved and never got in life. He now has it at Rainbow
Bridge.

Melodyt and the terrific three

-- 
Melody Tomaszewicz
Holdings Record Maintenance Team Leader
New Brunswick Libraries
Distributed Technical Services
Rutgers University
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (732) 445-3856 ext. 313

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"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

[Posted in FML 5640]