This e-mail is long overdue....
I kept promising to give an update on Ghost unfortunately I kept putting
the email off in fear of jinxing the boy's miraculous improvements.
However, here we go:
 
September 3rd was the last time I had posted.  At this time Ghost had, had
diarrhea for many months and was being force fed to try and keep any weight
on him at all.  Realizing that force feeding and antibiotics were no longer
effective (as he started to loose the small amount of weight we had managed
to put back on him) we opted for surgery.  Ghost made it through the
surgery, however the results were not optimistic at all.  Preliminary
diagnosis was lymphoma due to enlarged lymph nodes and there was extensive
damage to his intestines that was stopping absorption of fluids into his
system.  Biopsies of both the lymph node and intestine were taken, however
the surgery took it's toll on the already weakened Ghost and I was forced
to accept the reality that Ghost may not make it through the weekend.  Well
my little boy suprised all of us, with a renewed will to live he made it
through the weekend with flying colours.  With the addition of Prednisone
to his list of daily meds to help the swelling of the intestines, Ghost
started to show interest in food again.  However, it took a lot of creative
shopping at the pet food to find something my stubborn ferret would eat.
He spit up ferretvite, nutrical, A/D, Totally Ferret and even ground up
chicken.  The better a food was for the ferret the less he would like it.
Thankfully I have a cat that will eat almost anything so Ghost's rejected
foods were never put to waste.  Finally food was found that satisfied the
boy: Wiskas Supreme wet cat food (liver and bacon especially) and Heinz
6months Chicken with Broth baby food.
 
At this point I would like to publicly thank both Troy-Lynn Eckart and
Randy Belair "for not giving up the Ghost" (no pun intended) and sending
me invaluable suggestions to help with my boy ( pumpkin really does help
diarrhea ).  Also I want to give a special thanks to Dr. Williams as he ran
an almost endless gambit of tests on the biopsy that was taken from Ghost
in hopes of finding a cause for the extensive damage.  In the end, Dr.
Williams found my miracle and diagnosed what was wrong with Ghost.  My boy
had "Proliferative Colitis" which is normally an infection of the colon
caused by a bacterial organism called Desulfovibrio (note: this can only be
definitively diagnosed by a biopsy).  Now that we knew the problem we had a
weapon Chloramphenical !!!!!
 
To condense the rest of the story, Ghost spent 3 weeks on Chloramphenical
and Prednisone.  The antibiotic was removed, then I gradually weaned him
off of the prednisone.  My boy has now been off of all meds for 2 weeks, he
is eating a TF/Mazuri/Iams mixture and best of all HE HAS SOLID POOPS!!!!!!!
On Friday we visited the vets for another checkup and every person at the
vets accused me of switching ferrets :-) as it was nothing short of a
miracle that my 1320g ferret was the same kid who weighed 540g and was not
expected to make it through the weekend.
 
Needless to say.... I am the very proud mother of a chunky boy named Ghost,
and we expect to be together for many years to come.
 
Paige
Thunder, Hershey, Cosmo and Ghost
[Posted in FML issue 2501]