In case anyone misunderstands me and thinks that I am belittling a ferret's
illness or your concern in my longer post, that was not my intention.  What
I want you to know is that there is a good bit of hope for a long period of
pleasurable life for ill ferrets (which I think is another reason it seems
to newbies that there are a lot of sick ferrets here -- they just keep
going, and going, and going, and laughing, and stealing, and being spoiled,
so they are wonder weasels we talk about a lot).  I also suspect that
misdiagnoses (such as from ones vets who think any adrenal tumor must be
cancer which must have spread, or who forget that most swollen nodes are
from illnesses which the immune system is fighting (like when your own neck
swells up when you have a sore throat, or your armpits swell up when you
have bronchitis, or your lower back gets sore from swollen nodes when you
have the runs) rather than from lympho, or think lympho can be reliably
diagnosed from a blood test or aspirate (which it can't), or think that a
blood test other than the TN Panel can diagnose adrenal disease, or... Folks
are getting scared BY diagnoses when far too many of them should be scared
that the person is TRYING to diagnose WITHOUT the needed information!  (This
does not mean that you vet is not a nice person; just that you and he/she
should try to learn more.) When percentages are looked at very FEW ferrets
here are ill, many who are ill still have another year of joy ahead of them,
and many turn out to have been false alarms because of vets who did not know
enough to diagnose correctly.
 
Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 1878]