I am, once again, humbled by the amount of email I got in response to
my previous message about how to keep my ferret warm. Thanks very much
to everyone who wrote to us with questions and suggestions. :)
First, the tentative solution to my "warming my ferret" problem. A
sweetheart of a human being on the FML has offered to send me a warm
ferret sweater for Pippin, so when that arrives I'll try it on her for
size and see how that works. In the meantime I found an old ferret
t-shirt that I forgot about, cut the sleeves off of it, and put that
on her. So far she seems okay with it but time will tell.
So far as her cage goes, I pulled out an old space heater I had in my
closet that I forgot about. It's one of those "contained oil" things
that are very safe and can produce a lot of heat. I set up the space
heater next to the cage, set it to the lowest setting, and draped a
bedsheet over both the cage and the heater. (There is no fire risk; even
on the highest setting, the heater doesn't get very hot and can even be
touched with your bare hand.) After about fifteen minutes the entire cage
was toasty-warm. The cage isn't entirely enclosed; the rear and left
sides are entirely covered, and the front and right sides are halfway
covered (the lower half is still open). I also left a corner of the top
of the cage open to allow for ventilation. I did this last night (the
night of 1-10), and this morning was the first morning in the past 2-3
months that Pippin didn't wake up with a chronic case of the shivers so
I think it's helping.
By far the most common question I've gotten thus far concerns Pippin's
pacemaker. For those interested, the pacemaker was installed in November
2002 at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan (http://www.amcny.org/).
The pacemaker is entirely internal; there are two electrodes in her heart
that supplies the signal from the pacemaker unit which is implanted in
her abdomen. It's actually not a ferret pacemaker; it was designed for
kittens and small dogs. Yes, you can feel it through her abdomen as a
hard lump. It makes it a little difficult for her to walk and she has a
lot of difficulty climbing over steep inclines and ridges (such as over
the edge of a litterbox) but she's alive as a direct result of that
surgery. The pacemaker battery has a four year lifespan so odds are it
will outlive Pippin, but you never know...
The pacemaker was installed because of her heart disease. I don't
remember specifically what it's called, but it was described to me
thusly: There are four chambers of the heart and there are nerve
connections attached to each chamber that carries signals from the brain
on when to contract and when to release. Normally they're in sync; every
other chamber contracts or releases. With Pippin, one of those chambers
wasn't getting a strong signal so her heart wasn't pumping right. (I
accurately likened it to a four cylinder automobile engine that had
one spark plug wire removed so the engine only ran (badly) on three
cylinders.) A normal ferret heartbeat is somewhere around 110 beats per
minute (bpm); when Pippin was admitted, she had an erratic heart rate of
approximately 30bpm. Her heart had stopped completely once (while I was
signing the admittance papers) but they got her started again and it
hasn't stopped since. So, yeah, she's a fighter. :)
From what the vet at the NYAMC told me, this particular type of heart
disease is VERY rare and most commonly seen in dogs. At the time of
Pippin's surgery it was the ONLY time the NYAMC had ever seen this type
of heart disease in a ferret. Pippin is also the second ferret to ever
receive a pacemaker at NYAMC, and I've since been told that she's also
the longest-lived ferret as the first recipient went to the Bridge
several months after surgery.
For those interested, I've posted a couple of pictures of Pippin:
http://www.godun.com/~steve/pippin/pippin1.jpg
This is a scan of one of her x-rays showing the pacemaker, taken
immediately after surgery. (The smaller white flecks are surgical
staples.) She is laying on her right side; her head is off the image
to the left.
http://www.godun.com/~steve/pippin/pippin2.jpg
Second x-ray taken immediately after surgery. This one was taken from
below; Pippin would have been resting on her back, with her head off
the image to the right.
http://www.godun.com/~steve/pippin/pippin3.jpg
Pippin's first day home from surgery. You can see the scar where they
implanted the pacemaker. The bandage on her front paw was where they
had an IV inserted.
And, lest you think the rest of her days were Hell...
http://www.godun.com/~steve/pippin/pippin4.jpg
This is Pippin as she is today -- or at least how she was about four
months ago. Pippin LOVES running around outdoors. This picture was
taken in a nearby park. (While Pippin does have cataracts, what you're
seeing in this picture is mostly a reflection of the flash.)
Thanks again for all of your support and ideas. :)
[Posted in FML issue 4390]
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