Okay, we don't have a Mr. Peabody and our Sherman doesn't have a tail, but this may interest some folks. Because most of this is ancient history in ferret medicine terms I have quite simply forgotten a lot of details, and i know that there are those who can add on their own info. Here is a smattering: Sevie: Sevie isn't a surgical candidate but things were carefully weighed before rejecting that option for a pacemaker. These days pacemakers are much smaller than they were when the first pacemaker was put into a ferret so size wasn't a real factor over-all in the weighing for Sev. The first pacemaker to save a ferret's life was put in by Dr. Deborah Kemmerer, in a young and large male according to folks at her office. In Sevie's case she has a lot of blood pooling and backing-up so the vasodilator hit with Enacard was tried. Enacard had been used with ferrets who have just Level 1 A/V Heart Node Block and for cadiomyopathy but folks had avoided it with Level 3 in case it might drop blood pressure too low. For Sevie it has given her an additional month plus after her first two months or so with Aminophylline alone. Dr. Jonathan of Vetheart was the one to think of trying it experimentally in her case, and is one of the cardiologists involved. Her condition is terminal but without treatment she would have been dead within days of on-set. Hjalmar: Okay, now we are going back in time to a ferret whose onset of adrenal disease (in his case sadly from lympho) predated adrenal surgery or at least it's discussion, though others definitely began doing adrenal surgery during his illness and he finally had surgery. That was also back when ferret adrenal disease was thought to be Cushings. He at first was on Lysodren which since has been discarded from ferret approaches due to many problems but was being investigated by Dr. Tom Kawasaki at the time. (I think that Hjalmie also had Pred at some point but not sure of details any longer after so many years.) Finally Dr. Liz Hillyer discussed the then-somewhat-new adrenal surgery option with our vet who was consulting with her on Hjalmar. On surgery it was found that only one adrenal was bad (Using ultrasounds for that was also new and confusion did exist as a result.) The Lysodren had atrophied his other adrenal and he went into Addison's Crisis. That was before the medical approaches for Addisons in ferrets existed, and he was sent home to die with only hours expected. On the spur of the moment a non-ferret vet at the same practise (Dr. Erno Hollo) suggested that as long as he was dying anyway we may as well try Florinef. Instead of being dead in hours Hjalmar was normal within hours. Around the same time Dr. Bock in CO was trying Florinef and wound up doing a journal article on it. Helix and Fritter: Both of these individuals were in the same lympho clump as Hjalmar. Helix's progressed too rapidly and on the day her chemo was to have started she instead had to be put down. Fritter had chemo. In her case it was just Pred but it gave her a good chunk of added quality time and a longer life for about 9 months. These treatments were done under the direction of vets at the AMC or in consultation with them (folks like Dr. Kathy Quesenberry). Because of the good results with Fritter Katie Fritz had chemo for Bandit who was 3 years old at the time and was one of the about 10% of ferrets who get remission from chemo (though newer approaches are being tried all the time) going on to live to 8 and 1/2 years. Her Bandit was on the Jeglum protocol named after Dr. Ann Jeglum who first devised it (and one of whose admiring nicknames is Dr. Lympho), and other experts like Dr. Kathy Quesenberry consulted. These are also old cases as are all in this letter except Sev's. Meltdown: Meltie had ventricular bigemini with cardiomyopathy, and even though she was someone for whom Digoxin would not normally have been tried since her compressions were not compromised, on the advice of Dr. Bruce Williams it was used when Enacard didn't work for that need. The Digoxin worked and that was added to the body of knowledge. She went on to live something over a year, maybe a year and a half more with most of it being excellent time. The Enacard was found out about while it was still experimental because our vet had her case discussed at a cardiology conference when he called someone there and cardiologists found Meltie interesting. Enacard was so new then that its research scientists had to be contacted. Meltie's success wasn't bad for someone expected to die any day. Ruffle: Ruffie had Phenobarbital on an experimental basis due to grande mal seizures from insulinoma at the same time that she had cardiomyopathy which were expected as a combination to spell out sudden death at any point. It didn't control her seizures but it didn't harm her either. Surgery finally gave her some added good time but it was very risky. I am sure that many folks here have similar stories of how some procedures or meds first became used in ferrets. Unlike things that were actually first tested in ferrets (such as Imrab 3, Purevax CD vax for ferrets, and Fervac) most of the meds and procedures used in ferrets have compelling first-case histories. During the lives of the ferrets above the primary treating vets of the ferrets above (all in New Jersey at time of treatment) were or are: Dr. Joe Martins in Bellemead who is our current vet, Dr. Hanan Caine (bar none the best surgeon I've known and now in MA's Richmond area), and Dr. Chris Newman who was near Princeton then. It is not in the least uncommon for folks who didn't have ferrets 20, 15, or even 10 years ago for so many procedures and meds to simply be unaware that such a huge percentage of ferret medical and surgical procedures arose from simply carrying something over and trying it, so the idea that testing led to such approaches is a typical fallacy which is just a natural assumption of not having seen what actually happened. There's no fault in that and it is a very natural assumption to make under such conditions, but it's wrong. [Posted in FML issue 3936]