Had to have 'Chopper in the vet's today because she passed out yesterday.
The first worry, of course, was that her heart disease was worsening
rapidly, but it's not.  Her compressions are starting to be a bit affected
but not enough to treat for yet, and no other heart problems were found, so
of course her blood sugar was checked next and that's fine.  It might be an
intermittent rhythm problem so if it reoccurs she'll be on Digoxin, but what
the suspicion is now is that she is getting too much potassium so we have to
cut back on that, especially since her gastrointestinal problems have
cleared up and her lasix level isn't that high.  Hard to find a balance
sometimes, and you know how it is with almost anything -- too little OR too
much will be bad.  Seems with potassium that is especially true and too much
is actually the more dangerous of the two.
 
BTW, her weight maintenance problems went away after we began treating for
her cardiomyopathy (which had otherwise been asymptomatic till very
recently) so remember that as yet another possible reason for slow wasting.
 
Asked about some of the things floating around here recently and heard from
Pete Reid at Marshall Farms.  He says that they still do NOT have ECE there,
but they HAVE been funding several university efforts toward developing a
vaccine for ECE.  He also said to let you know that they ship at 6 to 8
weeks once a certain weight is also attained, and that when they have
investigated reports of undersized kits they have typically found that the
pet stores were not feeding them moistened Marshalls food, or weren't
making sure that each individual was getting enough, a problem which can
also happen at the distributor.  He pointed out that since they are small a
day or two days with reduced food intake at that age has a marked effect on
size, and of course on health.  We have seen one ourselves who was pushed
from the food repeated by tougher ferrets and had to be fed separately so
we know this can certainly occur.
 
(For newbies who don't know me, I am not a Marshall employee and don't live
near it.  Instead I am a long-time FML member in a longer-time ferret
household, with a good number of ferrets (7 -- have to have enough time and
emergency medical money for each, after all, so we have resisted exceedingly
great temptations to add more) including at this point 4 Marshall ferrets
all of whom are robust and two of whom are appoaching 6 without any
problems, have had ferrets from a wide range of sources (small and large),
and have a history of asking questions, compiling information, and being
involved in improving veterinary health research to benefit ferrets.
 
Sukie
[Posted in FML issue 2286]