Our 11 month old female ferret "Helix" died from lymphosarcoma yesterday. In the event that it can help anyone, here are the details: About 3 weeks ago she started coughing. We thought she had a bad case of furballs as she responded to Petromalt treatments. During one of her spasms she started having problems with her rear legs. We immediately went to the local vet who took xrays (we wondered if she managed to hurt herself coughing at that point). The xray of her rear quarters showed a small spot on her spine - he felt that it may be a tumor and treated her with cortisone. The cortisone treatments showed an immediate improvement. Within a few days she returned to her normal "hell on 4 wheels" mode of operation (she was far and away the most athletic ferret we've had). All appeared well and we thought the nightmare was over. Last Sunday the stiffness in her rear legs re-appeared rapidly turning to paralysis by early Monday morning. At this point we started to search for other help and it became clear that our vet may have not looked far enough. In particular it was suggested by Mark Burgess (of this newsgroup) that lymphosarcoma was possible as year old ferrets are at a hot age for this (like 7 years olds and leukemia). Sukie started calling everyone she could to get help (our vet would not open her up for surgery, which he felt was necessary - he thought it was a localized bump on the spine). Along with several people from this newsgroup (many thanks to all!) UFO - the United Ferret Organization - was very helpful trying to locate local vets with higher levels of expertise. (I highly recommend joining that group. They have a newsletter and much enthusiasm. With people contributing useful comments it could turn into a very valuable source of information). By Tuesday night her hind quarters were completely paralyzed. We finally found the Animal Medical Center in NYC. [if you are in the NE this is supposedly one of the best facilities in the US] We were scheduled for an appointment on Thursday with one of their 3 exotic specialists. An xray was taken and it was clear that she had cancer. She was not in much pain and the lead vet said that a treatment may be possible, although it had not been attempted on a ferret at this point. We had a long chat and decided to go ahead with the treatment for a variety of reasons until she was in pain (no flames here - this was extremely agonizing for both of us). By Friday her condition had deteriorated to the point where the paralysis was spreading to her front quarters. She was having problems breathing and things were changing hourly. We had no choice and asked that she be given some cream when they put her to sleep. Should you ever need the services of the Animal Medical Center here are the particulars: The Animal Medical Center 510 East 62nd Street NY NY 10021 212-838-7053 we had Drs Quesenberry and Hoefer Steve and Sukie Crandall att!mhuxt!evans [Our sympathies. When you consider that there's something like 35-50 ferrets represented by their owners in this mailing list, and that Helix is the second within 7 months (our Toby died in April) with lymphosarcoma, it's somewhat frightening. I sure hope that there is some research going on on this.] [Posted in FML 0037]