Hi Everyone! I posted a while back regarding Dumpy my foster ferret that i adopted the other day, officially now a Hansen ferret!:) i described the symptoms he was showing (draging of hind legs, and stopped eating) i have been syringe feeding him Duck Soup for a month, and he has put on a whole lot of weight, from 1 pound to now 3!! i had seen and felt that his lymph nodes on his neck were big, but he was bumpy and bony all over when i started fostering him, i had a vet look at him the same day i signed his adoption papers, i had a gut feeling those swollen nodes were bad knews, and i pretty much got it confirmed by the vet, he shows all the signs of Lymphosarcoma, we haven't done any tests, like blood work or extracted any sample from the lymph nodes, because i was told that the chances of getting an accurate result were slim, bloodwork on a ferret is pretty inconclusive, and to draw from the node itself and hit the tumor was hard because it mostly consists of fat, so i opted not to do it. it also seems that his spleen is enlarged, my guess and my vets is that it seems to be due to lymphosarcoma, he is on Clavamox and has since before that been on Prednisone, He doesn't really eat on his own, i have to wake him and place him in front of his Duck Soup (wev'e made progress:)for him to start licking in the air for a while before lowering his head to the bowl. He sleeps alot, but is also active for about half an hour when out of the cage, he is just adorable, and seems otherwise happy, he takes off exporing and constantly comes back to me and attempts a war dance, i just love this little guy, he is so brave and sweet! then he goes to his tent his shelter mom gave him and cuddles the blankies....his lymph nodes seem to have gotten smaller since we started the Clavamox? (wishfull thinking?) The question i have is, when he seems to be showing all these signs of Lymphosarcoma, how long does he have left in him? is it going to benefit him to have the spleen taken out, how much time will it buy him if the sarcoma is eventually going to take out his other organs, like the liver, lungs etc. What are his prognoses if we take his spleen out? his shelter mom guessed he was around four years old, but he could be more like five. What good will chemotherapy do? is it worth it? i don't want to put him through a lot of pain and suffering, i want whatever time he has to be happy, and painless, even if it means it will be shorter. death comes to us all, i don't want to put him through a lot of pain and discomfort, when the outcome is going to irreversible be death, and to be honest i don't have the money to even take the spleen out, (i'm looking at about $350-400 assuming there are no complications) i feel terrible of even mencioning money, but i have to, it is very hard to watch my sick little guy that i just adopted, and think i may not even be able to do much, but it is also hard to know there are things my family need that we can't afford, and somehow ask of them to understand how much i love this little guy, and what it means to me to save him. we are foreigners in this country and don't even have an insurance in the event one of us really gets sick, and here i am looking for ways to pay the vet bills for my sweet Dumpy. i feel that maybee i should never have adopted him, but i didn't know. i love him so much and i know he loves me. It seems that Lucky who i also adopted may need surgery as well, she had a swollen vulva and we opted to start treating her with a hormone shot every ten days to get the swelling down, it did get the swelling down a great deal, but she has over the past month lost weight, and sleeps a lot more. she weighed 1. 88 and was this morning 1.16, i am concerned that she is becomming lethargic, and that there is an incomplete spay that has caused her to go in to heat, the reason we started out with the hormone treatment, was that it sometimes is hard to find the small pieces left in them to be removed, and again i opted to try this first rather than open her up. it probably sounds like i am a terrible ferret mom, but i really love my babies, if anyone has some advice as of what to do i would really appreciate it. i feel like i am opening myself up for a whole lot of flame, but i just don't know what else to do. i need to find solutions that are not going to bankrupt me. Sincerely Josephine [Posted in FML issue 2579]