Fernando left us last night. I had scheduled him for surgery this Friday, the soonest we could get him in this week. His sonagram revealed a large abdominal mass with a huge blood flow to it. I had thought possibly adrenal and Larry agreed. Even though Fernando wasn't a good surgical candidate I believed it was his only chance for survival. Last night when I fed him after work, I noticed his left foot was cool, not cold, to the touch. I was afraid we were running into problems at that point. I massaged his leg and held him till he wanted down. I sang to him. He probably wanted down cause he couldn't take any more of my off key singing. :-0 I then went and fed and medicated the others, checking frequently on Fernando. At 7:51 I gave him his carafate. At 8:02 I went to feed him and he had left us. sigh. His left leg was puffy. My fear had come true, his blood flow had been blocked. I called Larry to let him know. I had talked earlier with Fernando and told him that if he was too tired to go on, to not worry about me because I was doing this for him and it was more important to me for him to be comfortable, whichever way he needed to be. I told him that if he needed to leave us, I hoped he would do it here at home and before surgery. I didn't want him to go through the somewhat stressful event of being anesthetized before surgery. I wanted his last memory to be of us and our home. I told myself if Fernando left us before his surgery I wouldn't have doubts about my decision to withhold surgery till he was a better candidate but as it goes, I do. The if's pop up no matter what. IF I had scheduled surgery last week would that have been too soon, or soon enough? I might have lost him then. I was apprehensive about Friday's surgery, he was so weak, so anemic, so frail. Fernando was with us a short 2.5 weeks but in that time he learned what true love and caring is. The little ones accepted him and several comforted him. I showed him as much affection as he would allow and then some. I hope that he knew how much I wanted him to stay and live with us and how diligently I tried to improve his health. He had put on a bit of weight, He weighed 1.75 lbs at our vet visit last Friday though that was still severely underweight for as big a ferret as he was, and his fur was silky soft. Fernando is now with his companion who died 3 weeks ago last night. I hope he tells her that there are those of us out here that really do love them and try to help them get well. My deep condolences to all who have lost loved ones. hugs to all. tle Ms. Troy Lynn Eckart, F.B.S. Ferret Family Services http://www.ferretfamilyservices.org http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~sprite/ffs.html http://www.geocities.com/Petsburgh/Haven/5481/ Please sign up to support our efforts http://www.iGive.com/FFS [Posted in FML issue 4967]