Hello to all the fellow ferret lovers.  I've been on the list for a few
weeks and I really enjoy reading all the ferret stuff every day.
 
I have a question, but this is going to have kind of a long song-and-dance
leading up to it, so here goes.
 
In 1992 one of my ferrets got Valley Fever, which is a disease seen
primarily in the desert Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Texas
and California).  It is mainly a lung infection caused by fungus spores
that live in the soil in the desert regions.  At the time, there wasn't
much good information on the disease in ferrets except that a ferret with
Valley Fever usually only lived a month or two.  All of the known
treatments applied to dogs, cats, or humans.
 
When Lucy (one of my ferrets)first got Valley Fever we treated her with
Nizoral, which helped for about a month or so and then ceased to be
effective.  My vet heard (through a lot of phone calls and research on his
part) that there was a new experimental medication that looked promising,
so we put Lucy on that.  At first it didn't seem to be doing much other
than keeping her from getting worse, so my vet checked around some more
and found out that the drug does not dissolve in the system very well.
 
As was suggested to him, we started dissolving the pills in a little bit of
vinegar before adding Ferretone to it.  I gave Lucy this concoction three
times a day and she started getting better within a few days.  Lucy lived
for two and a half years after first being diagnosed with Valley Fever,
which is a wonder considering the nature of the disease.
 
My question is this: Are there any new treatments around these days for
Valley Fever?  At the moment none of my ferrets have it, but since I live
in Tucson there is always the possibility.  I even had it myself a couple
of years ago.  Since we are having an extremely dry year there's a lot of
dust blowing around and things could get nasty.  They've even had blurbs on
the local news about expecting higher-than-average cases of Valley Fever
expected this year.
 
Thanks for reading this.  Prayers and best wishes for all the fuzzies and
their human slaves.
 
Deborah P and the Five Unguided Missiles
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[Posted in FML issue 2718]