Dear Dr. Williams, Dr. Weiss, and Laura L'Heureux:
 
Thank you very much for your kind advice regarding Sneaker's adrenal
problem.  She underwent  surgery on December 27.  We took her to the vet
office at 8:00 am; the surgery lasted about 2 and half hours.  She rested
in an old incubator at the office until 5:00 pm and we took her home that
evening.  She slept almost all day the following day and now wants to play
with other ferrets!!  She now has a 2-inch zipper on her clean shaven belly
(as if she has more hair to loose :-) )
 
Unfortunately, the lesions were found on both adrenal glands and our vet
removed the left gland which had a larger lesion.  The good side is that the
tumors were confined to the adrenal glands; other internal organs were
intact.  To date we see no signs of complications from surgery.  We have been
giving her 0.33 cc of prelone every day until next Tuesday (after that every
other day) besides 0.25 mg of amoxycillin twice a day.  She takes chicken baby
food very well and gradually starts eating the mixture of cat food and ferret
chow.
 
We hope removing one adrenal gland improves her condition slightly.  Thinking
back about the surgery, we cannot give enough thanks for the advice we
received.  If it weren't for the FML we wouldn't have thought of scheduling
surgery early in the morning and would have left Sneaker unsupervised over-
night.  Also a direct result of reading the FML is that we rescued Sneaker
and gave her surgery.  Without all of you in Ferretland we wouldn't have known
about the adrenal tumors and what to do about them.
 
We are scheduled to get the stitches out the first week of January.  We'll
keep everyone posted about Sneaker's progress.
 
And Laura P McDonald, thank you for sharing your heartbreaking experience
with 'Possum's teeth.  We will keep a close eye on Mythril's teeth so that
'Possum's death will not be a total loss.
 
Happy, happy ferret new year!!
 
Yuki and Mike Busch
and 4 wonderful fuzzies (Swamp, Nuke Skyjacker, Mythril and Precious Sneaker)
Ft. Collins, Colorado
[Posted in FML issue 1060]