Hello:
 
We thought maybe everybody might be interested to hear how our elder weasel,
Ripple, is doing now.  As you may recall, he was diagnosed about a week
before Christmas as having an enlarged spleen which was impinging on his
stomach and causing irregular vomiting.
 
Well, due to his age (we found Ripple and so don't know exactly how old he
is, but we estimate at least 10 years) we didn't really want to operate on
him.  Our vet didn't want to operate at all until after Christmas (in case
there were complications), and so we had about a week and a half before
"O-day".  We elected to try non-surgical approaches, namely dosing him with
Collodial Silver.  Anecdotal evidence as supplied by many of you out there
seemed to show that this often worked in such cases, reducing spleen size in
many animals.
 
Over the course of 9 days we treated Ripple with 1 cc of CS every morning,
and he threw up a total of 3 times.  This *was* a reduction in the number of
incidents, which was encouraging, and when he *did* throw up it was always
very early in the morning (around 4:00 AM) which was nearly 24 hours from
his last dosage.  Overall, the trend was encouraging.
 
However, two of the incidents were on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
essentially back-to-back, and he was left very weak as a result.  We
decided, however reluctantly, that while the CS appeared to be working, we'd
started too late in the process for it to benefit him much.  The spleen
would have to come out.
 
On January 28th Dr.  Roeder operated on Ripple and successfully removed both
the spleen and the left adrenal gland, which was somewhat swollen.  She
reports that the spleen was one of the largest she had ever removed from a
ferret at just over 5 ounces (this from a 2.5 pound animal!).  His abdominal
wall was a little thin, she thought, but she attributed this to the problems
with the spleen and the adrenal gland.  Since she was already "in there" she
checked on the condition of other organs and, aside from the suspiscious
adrenal gland, she said everything else looked in great shape.  She
confirmed that judging from his innards Ripple is definitely at least 10
years old.  He suffered no adverse reactions of any kind to the surgery or
the anesthesia.
 
As of today Ripple is still at thet vet's under observation, but is doing
great.  He's up and active and apparently making some noises about wanting
to go home.  He'll be on antibiotics for a couple of weeks but Dr.  Roeder
expects him to be just fine.
 
It's been a *very* emotional period for us, having an animal so sick during
the holidays, but it looks as if The Powers That Be look after little souls
too.
 
Steve and Colleen
Continually Matching Withs with Missy, Newone, Zebulon Pike, Minx,
                                Slinky, Puck, and Elder Weasel Ripple
[Posted in FML issue 1428]