Victoria -
 
I was deeply saddened by the story of your ferret and how you had to
have her put to sleep.  I really feel sorry for the little girl though
it sounds like she had a pretty long and good life at 7 years.
 
A thousand dollars for such surgery seems outrageous to me!  Our ferret
had a severly enlarged spleen and it had to be removed.  During the
surgery, the vet noticed the stomach appeared to contain something even
though he had not had any food for at least 4-6 hours before surgery.
 
On further investigation, two, small foam rubber disks were found in his
stomach.  They looked like the little padded feet that go on the bottom
of some device to keep it from sliding around the desk. I still have them
wrapped in a piece of gauze to remind me of what could happen with these
little guys.
 
I guess what I'm trying to get to is the cost, which was only $250 for
the surgery to remove the spleen AND the foreign objects and post-op
care.  I would gladly have paid $1000 at the time but I could afford it
and so I am not trying to pass judgement on what you had to do.
 
As to x-rays for finding blockages... in my UNprofessional opinion, they
seem to be pretty useless unless the object is something that would show
up... metal, bone, etc.  Even after numerous x-rays, the foam rubber
disks totally escaped detection until our little boy was opened up.  It
seems that a ferret's favorite forbidden "food," rubber, does not show up
well, or at all, in x-rays.
 
We had a recent scare with one of our other ferrets and thought there
might have been a blockage.  We didn't even waste our time with x-rays
and requested a barium scan which I'm told is much more effective.  The
x-rays were quite vivid and it was rather obvious there was no blockage.
We never did find out what was causing his odd stool, since all other tests
showed negative and it cleared up on its own shortly thereafter.
 
     mike
 
[Posted in FML issue 0758]