To John Rosloot:
 
I, also am aggrieved at Bud's passing, especially in this joyous time of
year.  There are two things in your recent post that I would like to point
out, not only for you, but for the many people that read the FML:
 
It is a natural reaction to be upset and angry at yourself when a ferret
passes.  We all do it.  However, many times there is no way to "catch the
symptoms" at an earlier time, or to interpret what potential
life-threatening results may occur.  If we were to project life-threatening
illnesses every time one of our ferrets is under the weather - we would
spend most of our time at the vet - we would consider every sneeze to be a
sign of pneumonia, and every oddly colored stool to be a sign of intestinal
lymphosarcoma.  Ferrets are very stoic animals - as most of us who have
lost ferrets knows - you often don't see clinical signs at all until a
disease is fairly well advanced.  In retrospect, we can often pinpoint sure
signs that our ferrets were gravely ill - but this supposed "finding" is
often imagined, or exaggerated in our grief.  In short, you picked up on
the signs - but immune-mediated hemoltyic anemia is a very rapidly
progressing disease and many animals will succumb in only a few days
despite out best efforts.
 
The second point is somewhat academic at this point, but I would hate for
the readers of the FML to take some bad advice you received to heart.  I'm
not sure who told you to freeze Bud's body, but that it the worst thing that
you can do prior to an autopsy.  Think about it - when you freeze a body,
you turn all of the ater in it to ice - all of the plasma, blood, and most
importantly, all of the water in the cells.  When you thaw it out, all of
the cells in the body no longer resemble what they looked like at the time
of death.  For most purposes, except for gross examination by the naked eye,
the remains are useless.  We can't look at any tissues under the microscope,
run blood tests, etc.  We have changed the microscopic appearance of the
body beyond recognition.  Everything that we would have wanted to look at -
the bone marrow, blood, etc. can no longer be examined.  Unfortunately, this
was not good advice that you were given by the vet's office.
 
In short - autopsy should be performed as soon as possible after death.  The
only way to preserve tissues for examination is by putting them in
formaldehyde.  This stops decomposition immediately by denaturing the
proteins so they can't break down, but it also preserves the cells in useful
condition.  Freezing preserves the gross appearance, but actually distorts
everything else.
 
As someone who has posted more frozen remains than I care to remember - it's
always the same - look at the tissue position, note any gross changes, and
use the best of my experience to try to piece a story together.
 
Once again, our thoughts are with you in this trying time....
 
Bruce Williams, DVM, DACVP              Chief Pathologist, AccuPath
Dept. of Veterinary Pathology               [log in to unmask]
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
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[Posted in FML issue 1425]