Angie, lymphoma and insulinoma are two vastly different diseases.
If you lost the ferrets to lymphoma then it may be that you have a
lymphoma clump in your household. Those are real heart-breakers; we
have been through them twice in 26 years. There is some evidence from
MIT long ago that a silent virus about 2 to 3 years before the disease
is seen may trigger it. Only ONE type of lymphoma fits in that
category. Read here:
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/PDF/Lymphoma_Ferrets.pdf
including
BEGIN QUOTE
In fact, in 1995, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology were able to transmit lymphoma between ferrets with cell-
free extracts, suggesting a possible viral cause for lymphoma, or at
least some forms of it. The development of lymphoma in this experiment
took several years in inoculated individuals, and not all inoculated
ferrets developed lymphoma, but the results of this study are too
intriguing to ignore. To date, however, a virus has yet to be
identified or isolated from malignant lymphoma in ferrets.
END QUOTE
Lymphoma in the pancreas DOES look overtly like insulinoma except
that a lot more turns out to be going wrong when a person looks more
closely, ditto carcinoma in the pancreas. Both are more able to have
acute and very dramatic onsets.
Now, to learn more about insulinoma see:
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/PDF/insulinoma.pdf
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/http://ferrethealth.org/archive/http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.htmlhttp://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/http://www.ferretcongress.org/http://www.trifl.org/index.shtmlhttp://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
[Posted in FML 5843]
