Well, folks, I've resubscribed after a long time, and I guess it's mainly
because I've lost my first ferret after eight years of owning ferrets, and
I feel a need to be around other "ferret people".  Also I'm curious to know
if anyone else has had the rather unpleasant experience I've just had, and
whether there was anything else I could have done.  I've always sympathized
with those of you who have suffered losses, but it's never really hit home
before how much my fuzzies mean to me.
 
This is a long post, and a sad one, so please skip over it unless you're
interested in the specifics of one ferret's death from lymphosarcoma.
 
For some time now, Scully (our youngest ferret at between two and three
years of age) had been sick with some undefined ailment.  I thought she had
a hairball, but the vet thought that she had a respiratory infection.  I'd
been giving her antibiotics, which cleared up her cough, but she continued
to lose weight and she just didn't look "right".
 
Two weeks after she first saw Dr. Weiss for her cough I took her back for
a follow-up.  Her x-ray, when compared to the x-ray of two weeks prior,
seemed to indicate a mass compressing her lungs.  Dr. Weiss guessed it
was lymphosarcoma, a type of fast-growing cancer.  I declined a biopsy
procedure as it was risky and painful, and took her home with a bottle of
Lasix (a diuretic), a stronger antibiotic, and instructions to hand-feed
her.  I gave her the meds and settled her into her hammock.  Her breathing
was shallow and rapid, and she could only walk a few steps without flopping
down to rest, but I had hopes that the Lasix would buy her some time.
 
Another feeding Monday evening, and she was about the same, taking the food
readily and puttering around the room with the other ferrets for short
periods of time and then flopping down.  Mike and I ate dinner with her
under the table bundled into my favorite fleece jacket.
 
Tuesday morning I opened the top hatch in the cage and she scrambled up out
of the hammock and right into my arms.  I held her for a bit and then she
squirmed to be let down.  She made a few hopping-running steps and then
flopped down for a time, and then did the same thing again.  I fed her, but
she wasn't due for meds until evening, so I held her a while and then put
her down, where she puttered around until I took care of Elie's meds and
morning feeding and it was time to go back into the cage.
 
At lunchtime I tracked down some information on lymphosarcoma on the
Internet.  The prognosis was poor, but it looked as if chemotherapy was a
reasonable option if we could get her stabilized.
 
Tuesday evening I rushed home and made up her meds, then went to get her
out of the cage.  Her lifeless body was curled up on the bottom floor,
underneath the ramp.
 
We buried her in the back yard in a shady corner, in a makeshift shoebox
coffin, with wildflowers.  I cried.  A lot.
 
As the days roll on, grief mixes in with the guilt that anyone would feel,
the nagging feeling that something more could have been done, that one
ought to have noticed a problem sooner, been more assertive about
treatment, spent more time with her.  All of this will fade, in time, as
these things do.  Yes, she was only a ferret, but she was my ferret, damn
it, and I was responsible for her, and even though I did the best I could,
it still wasn't enough.
 
Gail Shochet
and the formerly five, now four: Elie Wiesel, Pepe, Kiaya, and Pixel
(missing Scully)
[Posted in FML issue 2693]