Ruffle's PM was done.  It turned out to be the liver which was her limiting
factor; the non-malignant but invasive disease/disorder had involved all of
what was left by the end.  Her heart had some normal aspect to it so now
we'll need to find out if it was cardiomyopathy or continued to be another
heart condition, perhaps related to her many deformities.
 
Maria, What are tha figures on the young sudden-death ferrets?  I'm not
trying to be difficult; it's just that sometimes there will be one or two
and the stories will circulate and add when folks don't know it's the same
animals.  Also, you said that multiple large breeders were involved, and
that makes it sound less like a breeding problem.  Do you have the texts of
the post mortems?  Over the last over dozen years the cases we have heard of
sudden or rapid (over days) death in young ferrets involved: an unnoticed
blockage, food improperly manufactured, infection, accident, splenic
hemmorage (the one involved had a very knowledgeable owner), liver cyst
(ditto for knowledgeable owner), and juvenile lymphoma.
 
Jeff, when Hjalmar had either an intractable urinary tract infection or a
re-occurant one during his lympho months we found that we could prevent
flare-ups by giving him blueberry puree or dried cranberries as treats.
Whatever it is in those berries which prevents bacteria from sticking to the
walls of the bladder seems to work in them also.  (BTW, someone else
recently asked if it is vitamin C; no, that component has been tested and
made no difference.)
 
A lot of folks don't seem to realize that not everything which produces
green runs is a case of ECE.  Many "germs" can do that as can other things.
ECE is a specific organism which is a particularly nasty one and easily
transmitted.  Another misunderstanding is that people seem to think that
"cancer" is one disease, rather than over a hundred -- each with it's own
particular degree of virulence, typical behavior pattern, primary tissues,
etc.  We responded privately to Scott about the amounts we've seen; in our
case we have one long term post-surgical survivor of an adrenal malignancy
(Meltdown, a Path Valley old stock spayed female, by 2&1/2 years now -- and
who is now 2 months from turning 8), and we lost 43% of our ferrets to
malignancies or related complications, but only one of those was at a young
age.  Malignancies are to elderly ferrets as cardiovascular disease is to
elderly humans.  Let's face it, wild humans tend to not be particularly
likely to make it past 35 and wild ferret relations often die by 3; after a
certain age it is all maintenance, no matter what the species.  Using
specific disease names for things with similar symptoms is like calling
beta-hemolytic strep the same as ebola because both cause bleeding.
 
Bruce Williams is alive and as well as he can be with his level of
over-work.  After he is done with teaching for a bit and his promotion
related things are over he hopes to have a bit more time for everything else
he is obligated to do.
 
        Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 1651]