I apologize. We've lost three uncles recently. Isn't it just awful when you've lost so many that you lose track and want to remember a lower number...? Oh, well, nothing we can do to change it; just have to get through it and out the other side at some point. Like Mother Jones said, "Pray for the dead, but fight like hell for the living." For anyone interested in the emergency we had: in the wee hours of Friday Ashling (whose blood sugar had been fine on last testing) suddenly went into a major reaction to a drop in blood glucose. We were able to get some sugar into her, warm her in a 105' bath (since her body temp had fallen to 93.4'F (should be about 102, give or take a degree), and even had to do gentle cheek puff mouth to nose and mouth artificial respiration when her heart and breathing apparently gave out for a while there, then off for emergency vet care... She made it and is under treatment with more care on the way. Ashling doesn't do things by halves. When she had bilateral adrenal neoplasia she was symptom free till one week in which she dropped a very large portion of her body fur completely -- from furred for greatly bald in one week -- and her follicles have been glitchy ever since and not all of her fur ever regrew due to destroyed follicles. She is on Florinef and now till enough is known for the best choices to be made (pre-surgical testing: CBC with Chemistry Panel, heart imaging...) she is on a lot more Pred-- more than she appreciates by a good deal, but that is life and just has to be lived with. Getting older isn't for sissies and she is 6 and 5/8 so she is late in her middle age and about to enter early old age. With humans after 35 it is all maintenance and ferrets are similar, just in ferret years and with their own suite of usual problems. That's just life; at least the love and friendship they and we build and nurture are more than worth the worry and hurt -- and that also is just life. In some ways little late Chiclet helped save Ashling's life because we were so used to some of the emergency actions for her that we just automatically did them immediately for Ashling. Oh, if you see my photo in the IFC program: Betty doctored it! Silly Betty! I was hugging Steve (who was holding me in return with one marvelous -- because it is his -- arm) and she went and changed it to remove the best part! So, "Blame Canada!". ;-) LOL! >I'm sorry, Gary, that you have lost two kids; I too had a ferret die >recently when she was put under for some routine surgery. I had my >vet do a necropsy and we discovered that she had advanced lymphoma and >probably not have lived much longer anyway. Did you have your vet >necropsy them? Oh, wow, Melanee! Excellent point! I need to knock some cobwebs out of my head because that is just such an obvious thing but I sure didn't think of it. Hidden heart disease also has done that to some ferrets under anesthesia, as could some other hidden medical problems. A few ferrets are like humans, too, and react to anesthesia. It is rare but it can happen. I think, though, that there also has recently been a lot of discussion on the topic so a few cases seem like more due to the very nature of focusing on a topic which brings in responses on something very rare. That happened with the discussion of sepsis, too, and there were some thinking a major problem was going on when really only a few ferrets among many thousands over a number of months were involved and according to Dr.Williams the rate is still the same as normal for sepsis incidents -- they just weren't discussed much before. BTW, there is one case: Yvonne's Clara who is doing much better by surviving much longer (People are building upon what others learn now.) and it sounds like she responded well to steroids in addition to antibiotics so hats off to Yvonne who is advancing the knowledge for us all. I wish we'd known that for Chiclet who we still dearly miss, but the care she and others got gave the foundation from which Yvonne could advance things, and this is the nature of improving health care sometimes -- with sharing winding up saving later ferrets. It's just important to recall that the rate may seem greater than it is because of the focusing. Gary wrote: >People seem to forget that they work FOR *us* - *we* ARE the employers; >they are the employees. Actually, they work WITH us; we, too, have responsibilities: to do up-keep, to learn beforehand so that problems can be spotted early enough so that they have a shot or correcting them, to follow directions, to ask about meds before giving them, to share other things we are doing with them to prevent anyone inadvertently causing dangerous situations, etc. For instance, before surgery anyone should check also on meds and supplements given since some react badly with anesthesia, with cutting, with post-op meds, with pain meds, etc. It is by working TOGETHER that ferrets are best helped. Iso has been used for AT LEAST 10 years as the recommended anesthesia for ferrets; very few respond poorly to it, but there is no 100% safe approach for many things medical: whether standard meds or alternative -- each carries risks. So, we just each try our best. [Posted in FML issue 4292]