William Pelle ???? - June 13, 2007 Cause of death--advanced adrenal disease complications William was a sweet DEW adopted by Melissa Pelle in November of 2006. He had been found a few weeks before running down a street in Dunellen, NJ. His coat was yellowish and coarse. We hoped with better nutrition, it would improve. He soon fit in with Melissa's other two ferrets. He was a sweet boy--not a kisser, but loved to be cuddled, and never tried to bite anyone, even in spite of being abandoned. He didn't have any of the routine signs of adrenal. He didn't really have hair loss, it was just starting to get thin. His hair was coarse when she got him in November, but frequently that is caused by crappy food. And it's been my experience that MOST people who dump pets don't really care enough about them to give them the good stuff. He didn't have any problems urinating either. The main thing that clued me into having him tested for adrenal was his behavior. He started sucking on the ears of her female until they were red and swollen. He was starting to drag her around during playtime. He started to get a little more aggressive towards the other male. The other thing I noticed was he started to get a more acrid smell to the oil on the coat. By the time he was taken in for surgery, he had rings of excess oil around his eyes, like a male ferret gets while he is in season. He was tested using the Tennessee panel, and was found to definitely be adrenal. He came through the surgery just fine, and we went to get him on Wednesday night. When they went to get William out of the cage and put him into the carrier, he had just passed away. Dr Kim felt terrible. He did a post-mortem, and let me watch (Melissa couldn't). Here's what happened. Apparently, the adrenal disease was MUCH more advanced than anyone knew. The growth was the size of a large grape (usually it's the size of a pea). When it's that far gone, the ferret's system is flooded with adrenaline. It prevented his blood from clotting. The staples that Dr Kim had put in had held fine, but he had slowly oozed blood out of small blood vessels in the fat around the adrenal gland. Because his blood didn't clot, he just slowly bled out. His abdomen was full of unclotted blood. Hindsight is 20/20; we should have asked to see him as soon as they told us that he had tried to bite a vet tech. William had never bitten anyone in his life--even after being abandoned in the street. Biting was very uncharacteristic for him. He probably had stroked out at that point from loss of blood and thus was acting weird. We might not have been able to save him, but at least she may have been able to say goodbye while he was still "there." In a way, I'm glad that he passed away there. This way at least we know what happened. If she had taken him home and he had died there, she would have felt terrible--thinking that maybe she had done something wrong. And if we hadn't taken him for the surgery, the lack of clotting could have killed him at home just from a good bump when jumping down from something. He could have bled out from a simple bruise, and she would never have known what killed him. I didn't know about the excess hormones from adrenal disease causing the blood to stop clotting. *Just another reason to take a ferret in and address adrenal as soon as possible.* I'm posting this to the FML in his obituary, so that others can benefit from William's experience. At least we know that the last seven months of his life were happy ones with good food, good friends, and a nice place to live. We usually decide what color wings our Bridge Angels have. His are beautiful pure white feather wings. They go with the pure white soft coat that he deserved and never got in life. He now has it at Rainbow Bridge. Melodyt and the terrific three -- Melody Tomaszewicz Holdings Record Maintenance Team Leader New Brunswick Libraries Distributed Technical Services Rutgers University Email: [log in to unmask] Phone: (732) 445-3856 ext. 313 ,',', __ \ `'`,' \ ()o=; `'`','`/ .. \/ / ( / \ "/ \(_ \(_ "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." [Posted in FML 5640]