July 6th, 1998
To All FMLers:
 
At 7:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time, July 3rd, 1998, our most Elder and
beloved ferret Newone passed away.  Cause of death was, basically, old age
and general system collapse as a result of extreme adrenal cancer.  Newone
died in her sleep, warm and comfortable, with her Humans nearby.  She was 8
1/2 years old.
 
Newone was a smallish (1.5 pounds) black-and-white sable throughout most of
her life, and the second ferret we brought to Wyrdhaven.  We got her so
Missy would have company, a classic case of ferret math (though we'd yet to
hear the term).  Newone's nickname was Little Dragon, and she stood out from
many of the others in that the normal rules of ferret society and domination
simply did not apply to her.  In her prime, anybody foolish enough to decide
to beat her up gets a fast lesson in what it feels like to be dragged around
the room by the ear, and yet she otherwise never picked a fight or tried to
assert dominance over any other weasel.  Newone was often furtive and
secretive; she was the one who hid in the cardboard tubes, who slinked from
one dark corner to another--and the one we never really could trust with
strangers ("Sniff.  Hmmm....I don't like you.  CHOMP!").
 
Newone was diagnosed with adrenal cancer in January of 1996.  Given her age,
general frailty, and attitudes regarding the vet, we elected not to have her
operated on.  We had hoped that the adrenal would advance more slowly than
her age and that she'd die in her sleep long before the cancer become much
of an issue.
 
Newone of course had other plans, and surprised us completely by living
another 2 1/2 years.  Part of this we attribute to the face that we didn't
believe in doing nothing however, and we were treating Newone with colloidal
silver.  We had heard anecdotal evidence that it had some curative
properties, thought it might help with the cancer, and figured it couldn't
hurt.  The resuls were superb...she not only remained alive for 2 1/2 years
with active adrenal, but she gained weight.  Up until the very end, when she
became quite frail, she was active and full of attitude like any other
weasel.  She did eventually lose almost all of her hair, but she otherwise
showed no signs whatsoever of any other adrenal cancer symptoms.
 
In the past couple of weeks, however, Newone had taken a noticable turn for
the worse.  She wasn't eating enough, nor was she very steady when she stood
and/or walked.  A cyst was removed from under one of her nipples back in
May, and though she recovered nicely from the surgery she never quite was as
'up' as she had been.  She slept more and more, cuddling in her special gray
blanket on a heating pad we'd given her (since she had no hair, she got cold
very quickly).  We knew that she didn't have much time left.
 
On the evening of the 3rd we were getting ready to go out to a fireworks
display when Colleen found Newone, stretched out on the tile floor and
completely unresponsive.  We actually *thought* she was dead at that point,
but after we picked her up and wrapped her in a blanket we discovered that
there was still a spark of life.  She had essentially dropped into a coma,
and was having very mild hypoglycemic sugar withdrawl spasms.
 
We took Newone upstairs, gave her a sub-cutaneous shot of 5% Dextrose (sugar
water, basically) and made her comfortable on her heating pad.  We knew that
she woudn't recover, but decided on the shot in the hopes that we could snap
her out of the coma.  It worked; she drifted out, blinked her eyes a few
times and took some water, then fell asleep.  She never woke up, dying about
a half hour later.
 
Newone loved cheese, pasta, and tomato sauce of all kinds.  She firmly
believed that Steve was the most important of her Humans, tolerating Colleen
as a necessary companion.
 
As of this writing Newone is undergoing autopsy at our vet's.  We've given
her permission as a matter of science...we're very curious as to how the
colloidal silver might have countered the symptoms of the adrenal cancer for
so long.  We do know that the silver wasn't coming *out*, which means it has
to be in her body someplace.  We're hoping that something might be learned
out of this.
 
Newone was a very, very special weasel, and the last of the First Three
(Missy, Newone, and Zebulon Pike).  With her passing there are no first
generation weasels left at Wyrdhaven.  We are greatly lessened by her loss.
 
She will be missed.
 
Steve and Colleen
Continually Matching Withs with Minx, Puck, Taz, Scamp,
                                Rosie, Mica, and Splinter
Waiting on the Other Side:      Ripple, Missy, Slinky, Zubulon Pike,
                                Ranger, and Newone
 
 
Newone before Cancer: http://www.concentric.net/~swoodcoc/icons/newone1.gif
Newone with Cancer: http://www.concentric.net/~swoodcoc/icons/baldnewone.gif
[Posted in FML issue 2362]