They say that things come in three's.  Well, I have had my share of it,
hopefully it will stop now.
 
1.  I took in a little boy that came from a home where the people did not
care.  His ears were so dirty that you couldn't see the wrinkles in his ear,
his nails were so long that they were getting caught on each other, his skin
was way oily from sleeping in sand (he had the clumping litter that he dug
out of his "cage" and slept in), and he was losing his hair from all the
itching.  His "cage" was a cat carrying container.  He has zero muscle mass,
which indicates to me that he never got out to play.  He has a thickened
ring around the base of his tail, one of his toes on his rear left foot is
growing at an angle with the toenail growing at a *different* angle, and his
femur on the same leg is broken (it would seem that he got out of his cage
at least once).  My friend says the owners weren't too concerned if he had
food or water, sometimes he went without.  He was eating 9 Lives cat food
and had brick red poop.  Turns out that he has ear mites which he
thoughtfully shared with the rest of my ferrets, and quite possibly has ECE.
Otherwise, he is the sweetest ferret you will ever find.  Whenever I come
into the room he will poke his head out and come visit me for a scratch or
just to lay on me.  If I leave the room, he throws a major tantrum.
Hopefully he will get through this illness with flying colors and he can be
a happy ferret.  (I sure hope my guys have strong immune systems.)
 
2  Spooky Ears decided that her normal food isn't good enough and ate God
knows what.  She couldn't poop one night, so I took her to the emergency
room, went through a bunch of stuff ultimately ending in me giving her an
enema--ferrets do NOT like enemas.  She did poop some stuff that did *not*
start out as food.  So she is fine now and back to eating whatever is
closest to her.
 
3. Snuffles had an episode last night of severe drooling and hind end
paralysis and partial front end paralysis.  Rushed her to the emergency
room to make sure it wasn't her back, but it turns out that it's "just"
hypoglycemia.  So now I have to decide what to do about that.  (This doesn't
help her case any if the litle boy does in fact have ECE.)  For those of you
that have dealt with this problem, I would like to know if surgery was done,
or if things were done via medication, and whichever the answer, how did
things turn out?  I want what's best for her, money is not a concern.  If
the surgery is only going to result in more tumors growing (if she has
tumors), then what's the point?  If surgery is going to give a better
quality of life, great.  If managing the problem w/ medicine is the better
way to go as far as quality of life, then so be it.  I'm not interested in
*prolonging* her life, I'm interested in her *quality* of life.  So, anyone
with any experiences to share, I would appreciate hearing about them.
 
Well, that is my wave of three, and hopefully everybody else will remain
healthy, at least for a while.  Ever notice how a crisis occurs *after* the
vet has closed?
 
Sandy
[Posted in FML issue 2394]