Greetings!
For once I'm posing the question rather than the answer.  :)
 
I had a woman call our Halfway House tonight with the intent to adopt.  She
had recently had to 'have' her ferret put down.  Apparently the vet she
was going to (less than idea in term of ferretry) diagnosed him with an
intestinal illness and tried the usual antibiotics (the woman either
couldn't remember or was never told the illess or meds in question).  The
ferret got worse and she was referred to THE ferret vet in our area who is
held in very high regard by his peers as well as his clients (and their
'owners').  He examined the ferret, looked at his chart, and tried another
battery of meds (again, unknown).  Still no response.  The vet said that
normally surgery would be an option, but in this case her ferret wasn't a
good candidate for the surgery and he recommended putting him to sleep.
Here's my questions.  What intestinal illness could this be?  The ferret
was 4 years old and, according to the woman, been in good health up to this
point.  I heard this story (my fiancee fielded the call and filled me in
afterwards) and my first instinct was that she misunderstood (and was
misexplained) the problem and that her boy may have had a right adrenal
tumor.  What intestinal illnesses (if any) are commonly treated surgically
(I'm not including a blockage as an illness in this case)?  -Erin...
 
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   Mr. Erin M. Ennis    |       Any sufficiently convoluted argument can
 eennis(at)zoo,uvm,edu  |       be made to appear to be science as the
 Water Resources Major, |       layman equates incomprehensibility with
     Biology Minor      |       science.                -Unknown
    Uni. of Vermont     |
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[Posted in FML issue 2327]