Ruffle's ascites is worse now than it had been 6 days ago when she was moved to 1/2 tab of Lasix daily, and worse than it had been 3 days ago when she moved up to 3/4 tab daily. Now we are in a scenario where we have to watch out both for the retained abdominal fluid and for post-lasix dehydration of other areas. It's strange to see her with her huge belly (over 13 ounces of fluid), but loose skin and dry eyes after her doses, and to see how much piddle she can put out. It's all a balancing act at this point which requires close monitoring, thus less sleep again on our parts since we are in shifts. The wonderful thing about it (That sounds strange, doesn't it? Still, there is one HUGE blessing.) is that even now she is pain free and getting a kick from life. As long as she remains without fluid in her lungs her passing should be gentle and comfortable, just a matter of not waking at some point. Given this experience and Meltdown's comfortable time with her cardiomyopathy our advice to any ferret person with one which has cardiomyopathy would be to not over-react when you first find out. If a ferret is able to avoid having fluid in the lungs the disease/disorder can be a painless and graceful one. A good vet will know or learn which meds are appropriate. In Ruffle's case that is now a combination of Lasix and Enacard (with Proglycem for her reoccurent insulinomas), and for Meltdown who has no ascites to date but does have ventricular bigemini when untreated meds are a combination of Digitalis and Enacard. (Meltdown has been monitored for 3 minutes at a time now without one occurrence, something which startles every vet who finds out. This is even better than she did on a combination of Enacard and Propranolol. As far as anyone knows she is the first ferret with ventricular bigemini caught in time to treat it and the results are magnificent!) We have read and heard of ferrets have 8 to 10 comfortable months with cardiomyopathy when treatment and luck are on their sides. What seem to have best helped our two sick ones (who are both older Path Valley sterling silver mitts from the old stock) are the ferret mailing list, great vets, meds, and careful monitoring. How did the fml help? We had NEVER been through heart disease aside from a mild problem with Fritter in the last stages of eight months with insulinoma and lympho years ago, but we knew EXACTLY when to jump and how high BECAUSE YEARS OF READING FML MEDICAL POSTS HAD TAUGHT US. That meant that we were able to catch their problems very early. Cardiologists said Ruffle's could not even be called cardiomyopathy at the point when we caught it, and that Meltdown was more likely to just never wake up than never have her problem caught. (In Ruffle's case it is felt that if she also had not developed her other problems and had to go through emergency major surgery just to survive that she may have gone a year; it was that mild at first.) Because of the fml we knew to move fast when Ruffle had her first (comparatively mild) belly swelling which felt water-balloonish rather than like swollen ropes of intestine, and to do the same when Meltdown had a dopey spell that did not look like normal deep sleep of respond rapidly to honey on her gums (as an insulinoma would have). We called in and said "We've got an emergency and unless you want us to try something else we don't know about we will be there in 10 minutes." Some people don't like to read medical posts. Our advice to them is to do so anyway because they will help you better care for your ferret, and will provide information your vet can use. Also, you will be able to locate emergency information better for unusual conditions and will find emotional support. Sukie [Posted in FML issue 1620]