Hi everyone,

I've been reading each day with everything else going on with work,
the shelter, Chewie's "plumbing" surgery and our recent rabies clinic
if feels like forever since I've sent in a post. Even with every penny
being so tight these days, I felt led to make donations towards the
medical research for one obvious reason and one heartfelt reason.

The first donation is from the hospice ferrets and ferrets from the
fire of South Shore Ferret Care. All of these ferrets are alive and
living comfortably thanks to the medical strides that have brought
advances in managing insulinoma, adrenal, lymphoma, DIM, ADV, distemper
and so much more...

The second donation is in memory of my mother, Phyllis Wall, a school
bus driver for 40 years, she passed away 5 years ago come this May 4th.
I can tell you that as an only child with no family to lean on that
more ferret folks than relatives were at her wake and funeral.

She had rheumatic fever which caused heart problems her whole life,
ongoing congestive heart issues and in the last year of her life she
got a bad staph infection which necessitated IV antibiotics. Because
she was on state insurance they only would pay for a visiting nurse to
come every other day, but she needed two different IV antibiotics twice
a day.

It may sound silly, but those darn ferrets helped me to help her. Since
I was used to giving the shelter ferrets sub-q fluids, lupron shots, I
wasn't scared to learn how to tap an IV bag, check for bubbles, manage
the flow, flush her ports, start her IV, change and administer the next
one. Each morning it was up at four am to fed and medicate the shelter
ferrets, then off to mom's to do the IV antibiotics, then off to work
all day and the reverse at night, to mom's for IV antibiotics, to the
fed and medicate the ferrets at the shelter and collapse into bed.
Eight straight weeks of this. Each day she would say "good thing you
got them fahhretts, they taught you how to help me". She always called
me "Diane Doolittle" and said that I was like Ellie Mae Clampet with my
"critters". Eight months later she was gone, quite unexpectedly, never
waking up from a routine heart surgery.

To this day, I am more attuned to the gurgle of a heart sound, a cough,
the bluish tint on the belly and know not to give fluids as possible
congestive heart failure in ferrets and more than familiar with lasix.
The saying for the ferret folks in my area is that when one of our
ferrets passes that my mom the bus driver, picks them up at the bridge
and drives them to the gate of the rainbow bridge.

That's a vision that still carries me to this day, a big yellow school
bus with mended ferrets, wreaking havoc on the bus like kids, driving
to the gate, with my Mom at the wheel.

Diane at South Shore Ferret Care Rescue and Hospice

[Posted in FML 7041]