>Sukie is absolutely correct.  The blood test on Parris did NOT indicate
>she HAS lymphoma.  Just the possibility she does.  Thank you Sukie for
>this correction.
 
I figured that YOU knew this because you carefully said "symptom".  It
was not at all obvious that enough others realized it, though, and I was
afraid that if the problem goes away without it even being known IF it
is lympho that approaches which have are known to provide help might be
ignored by some.
 
All too often I hear from extreme fringe people who are anything BUT
willing to provide for ferrets' health care with comments like, "Well,
I KNOW it's adrenal but I don't want to try surgery or Lupron so what
should I do?" (I spend a lot of time on that answer explaining many
details and mentioned that if the person could absolutely not save or pay
on time to have decently effective measures used or used in combination
then melatonin by itself (though better combined with other approaches)
is better than nothing.  The writer, who will forever go unnamed and is
not a solitary mote, simply wasn't willing to spend even that level on
cash on the ferret.  The upshot is that I can just imagine a number of
home-"diagnosed" and "treated" ferrets of those who try this on their
own.
 
The thing I can't figure out is WHY do people who have already decided
that when push comes to shove they don't care enough to find a way to
provide *needed* vet care for their ferrets write to me when I obviously
will recommend care by a ferret health professional?  Does it help them
pretend that they are doing something when they aren't?  Oh, well, now
you know one of my big gripes in this ferret world; we all have them.
 
>If she does not show improvement at that time, her vet wants to do an
>ultrasound and/or biopsy... I chose to try acupuncture while *waiting*.
>I also assume she has lymphoma, probably because I'm very gun shy after
>loosing 3 other family pets to it last year.  I hope I'm wrong...
 
I hope so, too.  We have a lympho clump here now, too.  Lost Meeteetse,
Jumpstart, and Warp.  It's the kind of club that we all wind up hoping
others don't join.  For those who don't know, one possible cause of
lympho is a triggering silent virus.  There is more on this in the Ferret
Health List.  The identity of the individual virus is unknown -- those
being very hard to track down to specifics as those who recall the ECE
research which finally found and confirmed that virus will remember --
but work done at MIT indicates that a viral trigger aspect likely exists.
We went through a clump years ago, too.  At some point further
individuals are fine, the exposure having likely happened some time
before.
 
Arrrghhh, talk about a typo!  I wrote:
>Carefully meds (including some herbals like true licorice and ginseng)
>or items like caffienated beverages which carry a risk of causing
>fruther circulatory problems.
 
The missing word is AVOID.  Avoid such items like plague when circulatory
disease is present.  I think the context got across that these are
problems sicne I mentioned " carry a risk ... further circulatory
problems".
 
Sukie
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth (the current home of
the Ferret Health List with it's conversations, ever growing
extensive Files, and other helpful features)
 
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/ (the easily searched site which holds
the Ferret Health List Archives)
 
http://geocities.com/sukieslist (a site given to me which I simply have
not had time to learn to update so some of the links are no longer active
and the FHL link is the old defunct one so instead use the one right
under my name)
[Posted in FML issue 3883]