Pog took Ys to the vet Tuesday for her ultrasound. She now has a shaved belly as well as a shaved neck, and is all around quite pathetic. The boys are helping to keep her warm–even Minsc! I’ll post pogle’s summary of the trip, as he explained the situation to some email friends:
Took Ysabell to the vet for an ultrasound yesterday, she had some
bloodwork done last week that showed liver problems. Ultrasound didnt
find evidence of cancer thankfully, so now we get the joy of feeding a
ferret nasty-tasting antibiotics twice a day for the next two weeks.
And if that doesn’t fix her problem (shes lost a lot of weight and is
very out of sorts), the next best guess for what’s wrong with her
is…Crohn’s disease/IBD. I’ll let you decide why that might be
amusing to me. But at least theres a chance we can treat her now.
We’re using ferretone and chicken broth to help convince her to take her meds (thank goodness they’re liquid). She’s still eating well (and eating wet cat food), but she’s still tiny. I don’t think her weight has changed further. I splurged and got her some of the “good” canned cat foods (meat as the first 3 ingredients on the list and/or no grain varieties) and we’re experimenting with those:
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Wellness canned cat food: very thick pate, so I added a lot of water; it took her a long time to eat, so I’m going to start splitting the cans and only giving her half at a time. She did eat it though.
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Merrick Gourmet: she’s trying her first can this morning. We’ll see if the bowl is empty by tonight.
Since we were taking Ys anyways (and our vet offers free dayboarding), we went ahead and got Minion and Minsc a deslorelin implant to try to pre-empt the development of adrenal disease in either. It is a contraceptive and should keep their bodies from creating too many hormones which would just end up in their adrenal gland, and thus causing the issues. Jack Jack is almost a plumpy on the medication! Ysabell will get an implant as well, once she’s well. The implants should be effective for a year or so, so I think we’re just going to treat it as yet another yearly vaccine the ferrets need. By starting them early (before they have the disease), we hope to extend and improve the quality of their lives.
