My number 1 best boy had most of both his adrenal glands out a week ago. I needed a Friday operating day to be able to spend the weekend with him following surgery, so it was scheduled way in advance, giving me several weeks to worry about the outcome. The week of the surgery I was fortunate enough to have a co-worker request a shift trade which gave me an extra day off, so I was home with him for three days. Big waste of my time (worrying) he was fine. He'd been given Duck Soup daily the 2 weeks prior to surgery, and we opted for the IV drip during surgery and the rest of that day, what I considered to be a well spent extra 84 bucks. When I picked him up about 7 pm, they wanted to leave his IV catheter in place in case he crashed during the night and needed emergency attention. It was unhooked from the tubing, and wrapped with stretchy green gauze to his front leg. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't believe I'd opt for this in the future. It made handling him more difficult, and next morning, on the way out to the vet hospital to have it removed, he unwrapped it, leaving a glass tube flopping from his leg! He was really supposed to not have food when he came home the night of the surgery, but he was being kept in the kitchen - where all the food smells are. When I fixed Soup for the other ferrets, he wanted some! I fed him several small amounts that night, and when I got up at 4 am to tend to another ferret, he wanted food then too. Over the weekend he was allowed ground ferret food added to Gerber baby chicken, but he wasn't to eat regular kibble. There was a water bowl in his 'hospital' cage, which he regularly spilled, and only flat towels on the cage floor. No climbing into hammocks, no clamoring over litter box edges. Whenever he woke up I'd take him to a litter pan that is a walk-in style, and he always used it. Only during the nights was the corner of the cage used as a potty. On Sunday afternoon I returned him to the ferret area so he could be with Welly, giving them the smallest of the 3 'rooms', and removed anything he might climb into or through. They slept in a file tub laid on it's side with a lot of towels. He now had access to regular ferret food, but because he was sleeping a lot and I was frequently offering him small amounts of Soup, I never saw him accessing the kibble. By Tuesday morning when I had to return to work I felt confident he would be fine during the day. Kouri had a 2.25 inch incision with 11 stitches. There was not even a hint of bruising on his bare pink belly, and he healed nicely, with no swelling or discoloration of the incision. I applied Calendula drops to the stitches twice a day, and they came out yesterday, 8 days post surgery. Most of the scab came off with the stitches, and I was amazed at how clean and fully healed he is. Even before the stitch removal he was running, jumping, climbing on the file tub, and trying to get me to play with him. What a guy! Georgia - the left coast one... [Posted in FML issue 3368]