We took Sneaker, approx.  6-year old female, to our vet.  She had her left
adrenal gland removed exactly 2 years ago; at that time, the vet found that
her right one also had a tumor.  At that time we decided not to remove her
right gland and starting giving Ovaban(sp?) to her and her hair grew back.
 
Recently she has started showing signs that the tumor on the rught gland has
become more active, her nipples have become bigger and redder and her vulva
is slightly bigger (not as big as 2 years ago).  She is definitely
lethergic.  What worries us is that she whimpers; she whimpered every time I
picked her up about a week ago and now she does it even when she is in her
bed.  Also, when she uses the litterbox she makes sounds (it sounds like she
squeezes belly to pee.)
 
After conducting several exams and inspections, the vet decided to go for an
exploratory surgery.  We will bring her in this Saturday morning.  If her
right adrenal gland looks bad, the vet will remove it; he thinks it will be
almost impossible to take partially since Sneaker is so fat and the gland is
probably well embedded in fat tissue.  If the spleen is big due to
splenomegaly, he will remove the enlarged spleen.  If he finds both adrenal
gland and spleen have tumors, ... well, we just hope the surgery will not go
bad.
 
We know that a couple of bilateral adrenalectomies were reported on the FMl
and we are curious how these ferrets are doing after surgery.  In particular,
we (through our vet) have heard that the vet school here in town has been
doing bilaterals without long term hormone replacement and are wondering if
anyone has experience with this.
 
Thank you very much for your help.
 
Mike & Yuki Busch, Ft. Collins, Colorado
5 wonderful fuzzies (Sneaker, Socks!!, Barnie, Lucky, Phoebe)
and 4 bouncing over the Rainbow Bridge (Mythril, Swamp, Nuke, Zach)
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[Posted in FML issue 1789]