Hey All:
 
Well, it's been a rough week for the Weasels of Wyrdhaven.  Puck (age 8)
died suddenly and unexpectedly this Thursday past (the 18th).  Autopsy
turned up a kidney cancer of all things (the first our vet had ever seen in
a ferret) that had spread to other internal organs and which had expanded
his kidney to *7 times* normal size at death.  (These sure are tough
animals, aren't they....two days before Puck collapsed his was playing and
bouncing like any older ferret.)
 
As it turned out, one of our youngest weasels (Mica, age 2 1/2) had an ear
infection as well, so we took her in for an exam at the same time we went
to pick up Puck's body (the 20th).  Turned out she has a large, rapidly
growing mass in the back of her jaw, on the right hand side.  Our vet feels
it's almost certainly cancerous since she was unable to find any signs of
infection in the mass itself (the ear was probably infected because the
mass had closed off her Eustachen tube, which is what drains the ear).  On
the other hand, its sudden appearance (she had NO signs of this a couple
of weeks ago) and general overall health seem to indicate a cyst or other
infection.  She also had a fairly high fever which is consistent with an
infection, but that could have just been the problem with the ear.  The
mass is inoperable where it's located so....we have a tough choice.
 
Since the 20th we've been hand-feeding Mica soft food (she can't eat
anything hard now due to swelling of her jaw), giving her antibiotics and
colloidal silver, and generally trying to keep her energy up.  She runs and
plays as much as she can, and her sense of balance (while shaky) is still
good.  Her jaw is heavily swollen at this point though she doesn't seem to
actually be in *pain* until we feed her...the action of swallowing would
appear to cause her some discomfort.  Her weight has remained mostly
good...she's probably lost a few ounces in the past two weeks from her
"ideal" weight, but the 20-30 cc's of food she'll eat each day seem to be
minimizing any loss.
 
Our hope has been that this is indeed an infection of some kind and that
we'd be able to knock it down, but it's not looking good--the swelling is
worse than it was, though her fever is gone.  Our vet says any operation is
really out of the question--her whole right jaw would have to be removed to
get this thing, and (if it's a cancer) anything that got left would almost
certainly start the whole mess over since it's so aggressive.
 
Right now we're mostly just trying to give her time, and keep her energy
up, so that if this *is* an infection she can fight it off.  If she gets
much worse we're going to have to have her put to sleep, since she won't be
able to swallow at all.  If she knocks this thing back--if we can get *any*
real indication that this is an infection--then we'll keep fighting.
 
Anybody out there run across something similar?
 
Steve and Colleen
From the High Mountains of Colorado
[Posted in FML issue 2877]