First, thank you to everyone who responded to my message about Fresno.  I
took him back to Dr. Bock in Boulder, since we had been there before.
 
Second, unfortunately Dr. Bock found more than just an enlarged spleen.
He also found a suspicious lump, which turned out to be malignant.  Our
regular vet never found this, since she doesn't know ferrets quite that
well.  Fresno is now on medication, while we try to shrink the spleen and
cancerous growth and get his blood-cell count back to normal.  He might be
a candidate for surgery later, if all goes well.  So I appreciate your
continued hopes and prayers.
 
Moral of the story, and why I'm writing: PLEASE take your ferrets to the
best ferret doctor available!  I knew Dr. Bock and several others in
Colorado did more work with ferrets, but kept going back to my regular
vet because she seemed "good enough." I kinda thought of Dr. Bock as a
specialist.  Well, this kind of thinking may have cost poor Fresno his
life; I just hope we caught this in time.  PLEASE don't let this happen to
your ferrets--a good ferret doctor can find things a regular vet won't.
 
Fresno still seems in good spirits, btw, so we're going to fight this thing.
I know it's not on the scale of September 11th, and it's not a human or
anything--but he's still a member of the family.  We're going to do all we
can for him.
 
Take care,
--Fred
[Posted in FML issue 3617]