Well, it seems quite clear that Fez did NOT have ECE - after only 4 days
of diarrhea, he is back to normal.  In fact, as soon as we decided to start
force-feeding, he turned around.  As you may remember, he's been sick with
one thing and then another for the past 2 months; every time he starts
getting better, he comes down with something else.  We suspected PBD, and
had him on chloramphenicol.  He improved, and so we agreed to take in two
fosters from Obadiah to work with.  But then he stopped eating and started
losing weight again.  Then, the middle of last week, he started getting
diarrhea, and when we gave him some pepto he started immediately pawing at
his mouth and vomiting (continuously for a good 20 minutes or so, and on and
off through the night).  We took him to the emergency vet, and then to our
regular vet the next day, both of whom felt the sudden vomiting was likely
to be an allergic reaction, although they weren't sure what to (Dr.  Weiss,
on the FML, made a similar comment, suggesting that he was overly sensitive
at this point and reacted to the Pepto).  I tried a little pepto a day or so
later, and while he kept it down he immediately started pawing at his mouth
again, so I have to assume the Pepto was the culprit for that (obviously, he
won't be getting it again in the future...).  The diarrhea continued, and we
started force-feeding.  After about a day of the feedings he stopped
loathing them, then started lapping up some of the mix first, and then
lapping a little more...  and then when we woke up Sun.  morning his food
bowl (which hadn't been touched until then) was suddenly empty, and he woke
up and started chowing down multiple times during the day.  Also, his stools
started to look pretty close to normal.  He's been off the Kaopectate for 36
hours and still acting normally, so I think we're out of the woods.
    I still don't know the cause - my guess is that he caught some bug,
probably something so minor that a healthy ferret wouldn't have gotten it at
all.  It couldn't have been ECE; besides the fact that not all the symptoms
match, the reality is that if a ferret with as compromised an immune system
as Fez has could kick ECE in only 4 days, it wouldn't be the devestating
disease it really is...  I think this also has one other implication.  Rudy
commented the other day that ferrets from Obadiah's, in specific, are
carriers of ECE.  But Fez has a pretty messed-up immune system to begin
with, and he had every chance to catch it if this were the case - Dave and I
spent a good hour or so at Obadiah's, cleaning litter pans, and didn't
shower or change clothes before entering the ferret's room (pretty stupid in
retrospect, but...).  Furthermore, Fez has both interacted with, and shared
a litter box with the two fosterees.  If they (or the other ferrets at
Obadiahs) were actively shedding the virus, its hard to imagine how both Fez
(with his already-compromised system) and Shadow (who'll be 5 in December)
could have escaped without catching it.  (And since its been 10 days since
we brought Butter and P.B.  Floyd home, its certainly been long enough).
This isn't to make light of what Fez did catch - but Fez has been down a lot
longer with other sicknesses than he was with what he just had now.  And I
don't mean to say that ECE isn't a risk - its a risk at any place where
large numbers of ferrets come and go.  But singling out any particular
shelter as a disease vector really needs to take into account all the
ferrets who haven't become infected, not just a couple reports that a ferret
has.
 
-Rochelle
[Posted in FML issue 1292]