Hi all!
 
I have been off the list for a year.  It has been a good year and a tough
year, and a very interesting year.
 
Since I last posted, I got married, my father had some incredible
complications during prostate surgery (he has recovered quite well).  I had
to close my ferret "mini-shelter" due to being kicked out of my beautiful
huge apartment because of a major rent hike designed specfically to make
me have to move.
 
Saddest of all, I lost my big beautiful bulldog DEW, Pepper (the alpha
ferret), to Lymphosarcoma last November.  He is so sadly missed.  A dog/cat
vet did a surgery on him in June, removing the first noticeable lump, and
they told me the path lab stated that the edges of the tumor were "clear"
of cancer.  Well.  In November he had so many tumors in his abdomen that my
(new wonderful awesome vet) called me in the middle of surgery to discuss
not waking him up because he did not have much time left to live no matter
what she did.  He had been very uncomfortable and unable to sleep and
agitated for a few days beforehand.  My vet, Dr. Mary Wictor, could not
believe his liver was still funtioning, it had so full of tumors.  We let
him go peacefully.  I had to leave work because I could not stop crying.
 
If you are in the Duluth MN area, I highly recommend my vet.  Her name is
Dr. Mary Wictor, and she practices ferret medicine with ferrets, rather
than the modified cat medicine I have experienced with 5 other vets (i.e.
requiring 12+ hours of fasting before surgery, for one example -- I have
many more examples.)  Anyway, Mary is wonderful.  She listens.  She does
not rush you in and out with a 5 minute office visit/consulatation.  She is
willing to try anything, and is very creative to get the job done.  Our
latest was removing two badly infected/abcessed top molar from my old girl
Princess, who was miserable with tooth pain.  Mary was all set to remove
the teeth when she discovered that she did not have any instruments small
enough to remove ferret teeth.  But she improvised and used a needle to
loosen and work the teeth out, and it went great.
 
Dr. Mary is also the vet at the Duluth Zoo, so she is wonderful with
improvisation.  She actually doesn't have a million ferret surgeries under
her belt (just a few) but she is confident with ferrets.  Above all, she
really LIKES ferrets.  She thinks they are very cool and very interesting.
And she doesn't "pooh-pooh" me when I want to bring a ferret in because it
is "a little off" and I can't quite pin-point just why I feel that way.
She understands that ferret behavior (versus clear cut symptoms) can
indicate something being wrong.  Perhaps the most important is that she
listens to what I think is going on (whether my information is from this
list, past exerience, or Cuji who runs the shelter in Stillwater) and she
does not get defensive about what I "think" I know, even if she is pretty
sure I am wrong.  (I thought Pepper had an intestinal blockage, she was
pretty sure it was a recurrence of the lymphosarcoma tumors -- she was
right, but beforehand she did not INSIST that she was right and make me
feel incompetent -- she seemed to know that I was desperately holding onto
hope that we would find something easily fixable).
 
The bad news is that she is no longer affiliated with Lake County
Veterinary Hospital, so right at this moment she doesn't have an office.
But she is planning to open her own office.  I don't know how long that
will take, but I hope she opens before my next crisis!  I will post a
message when I have an address and phone number of the new office.  She did
tell me to call her at the Zoo if I need her and we can work something out.
 
Finally -- I had taken in a rescue that I could not keep because of my
current living arrangements.  He was a young whole male, and needed to be
neutered.  I brought him to Dr. Mary and had him neutered (but not
descented) and when I picked him up I mentioned I hoped he would be adopted
soon.  Well -- Mary thought he was a terrific ferret, and she adopted him
for the Zoo's outreach program.  He is a very large, good-natured, laid
back ferret.  The zoo had a lonely only female ferret who needed company
and Mischief (now called Shroeder) was a perfect addition.  They like to
have two ferrets because they go out almost daily on outreach programs to
schools and community events, and she likes to switch off ferrets so that 1
doesn't get too exhausted.  (Mary retired both the previous outreach
ferrets because one has insulinoma, and she knows that a bonded pair cannot
be separated).  Well, when she took Mischief, she had the enclosure
re-designed so he and Lucy (the current ferret) could see and smell each
other for 3 weeks until Mischief's rutting hormones dropped a bit.  After
that, the ferrets were thrilled when the barrier was removed, because they
felt like old friends already.  So if you visit the Duluth Zoo, and see a
HUGE albino male ferret -- it was me who saved him from being released into
the woods!
 
Enough for now!
 
Luv to all fuzzies, and prayers too!
 
--Sheri (used to be Murphy) Johnson
 
Have you done (or at least seen) a weasel war dance today?
[Posted in FML issue 3065]