Author: pogle

It never rains, but it pours

Rushed to the emergency vet again last night…Minsc was extremely listless, unresponsive to most stimuli, and had a really low body temperature.

He’s warmed up now and they’re watching him closely. Doing an ultrasound and getting some samples…he’s got fluid in his abdomen, which is not a good sign. We’ll know more when they finish the testing.

Update, 1pm

The ultrasound, with mild sedation to keep him still, revealed that Minsc has an enormous mass on his liver. Its large enough that it is displacing his gall bladder and pressing on other organs. He also has from freestanding blood in his abdominal cavity. The liver mass has a very high index of being a hemangiosarcoma, a rapidly growing, invasive cancer of the blood vessel linings. In essence, it is a time-bomb that could rupture and kill him at any moment. And they tend to be inoperable, but the only way to know for sure is to attempt surgery. He also has a heart murmur, and his body temperature is still extremely low when they don’t keep him in the incubator. I don’t know that he could even survive surgery, so we don’t think it’s the right choice in this case.

We’re driving up shortly to say goodbye. It’s just not fair…

Draco is gone

More sad news…Draco passed away today.

We had taken him to the vet this week after noticing his weight was rapidly decreasing. The physical found pretty much nothing wrong with him at all, except the weight loss and some poor quality stool. The tentative diagnosis was IBD…with the usual caveat of potential lymphoma. Both are very common with ferrets, and both are difficult to diagnose accurately without surgical biopsies.

We opted to treat for IBD with metronidazole and vitamin B shots. He was on the meds for several days, and received them this morning. But tonight when I went to rouse the furkids for playtime, he was curled up comfortably in bed, and had passed away. The situation is pretty much identical to that we experienced with Ysabell, so it seems he likely had lymphoma after all, and something catastrophic happened, such as a rupture.

Good-bye Toe-cruncher…you will be missed.

Minion is gone

We had to make the tough decision to let Minion go this morning. I will post more details later, but for now I just wanted everyone to know that he has gone. And behind him, he leaves a legacy of over 5 years of love and joy, and an enduring legacy that has seen us adopt 6 other ferrets thus far over the years, and will continue into the future of providing loving, wonderful, and exciting homes for many ferrets. Way to go, little buddy. We’ll always miss you, but you really had a good life and we couldn’t ask for better memories.

Minion Status

After a couple days of seemingly good recovery, Minion isn’t doing so well tonight. He has been a bit listless tonight, with little appetite, poor stools..and he threw up a little bit earlier. We’ve talked with our vet, and if he throws up again after this last feeding, he’s heading back in to see if there’s anything we can do for him. More as it develops.

Minion is back home

Well, that was an unnecessarily exciting weekend, in the worst way.

Minion had a perforated intestine! It perforated at some point several hours after the time when we rushed him to the vet, by her estimation…and he came within hours of dying from it. He also nearly died while she was fixing it, being in shock and suffering from sepsis in his abdominal cavity from the food and fluids that leaked out. His systolic BP should’ve been around 90…it was 25. It’s extremely lucky that he pulled through with all that suddenly went wrong. Our vet and her tech assistant are just plain awesome. A huge thank you to Dr. Powers and Christina, they saved Minion’s life again!

He came home this afternoon, and is recovering nicely thus far. He gets antibiotics and pain meds for a week or so, and goes back for a recheck in 2 weeks. We’re also having the 4 inches of his intestine that were perforated (and thus removed) sent for a biopsy, as they had small white dots that could be indicative of lymphoma. Better to know there so we can put him on some meds to keep it (hopefully) from happening again.

He also had a small pancreatic tumor as suspected (the insulinoma diagnosis) that was in an extremely difficult to reach place. She was able to remove that as well.

Thank you to everyone who contacted us over the weekend to inquire how he was doing. Hopefully his recovery goes without issue, and in the future months our old man can enjoy a less eventful time of things.

Here we go again…

After several episodes of vomiting, severe lethargy, and unferrety behavior…Minion is back at the vet on another 3am visit. We just got home. He’s still there, getting stabilized with an IV and waiting to get in touch with his specialist vet. More details once she gets in to examine him…for now, I’ve not had much any sleep and desperately need some rest. Poor Michele is even worse off, she has to work in a couple hours. She was a real champ for Minion, lots of cuddles all evening before we decided he needed to go back to the vet.

Minion updates

Well…Minion just has all the luck. Or lack thereof. Poor guy was crying last Monday, keeping one eye shut. Nothing wrong with the eye that we could see that night….but the following evening he started developing a white spot in it, and was still keeping it closed. Off to the vet we go! He had an abscess forming in his eye, likely from it getting scratched during play.

We got him on some pain meds, and topical eye drops. A week later and its looking great! He has to keep getting eyes drops for several more days to be safe, but he gets to keep seeing at least!

But now for the bad news…his blood sugar has gone topsy turvy, so he’s developed insulinoma. And…he has a mass in his abdomen. He doesn’t like it being probed. We don’t know what it is, and the only way to find out is surgery. And our boy is getting old and less likely to handle that well, especially since he just had a round back in September.

So Minion gets daily meds for the insulinoma, and we have some more worrying and stress over how best to care for the little guy. Not a good day for me so far.

The only bright spot of the visit is Zoe, who went along for her checkup as well. Her blood work is improved from last month, so she’s holding on strong and doing better than expected at least.

A sad day…

Got a message today, that our ferret matriarch, Nyx, had passed away. She’d been having some issues with adrenal gland tumors, and as it turns out, had some other cancer issues as well.

Nyx was the ferret that started it all, the original one of the business we’ve built up over time. My cousins got her, and I found out that my allergies weren’t bothered by ferrets like they were with many other animals…so we got Minion. Then we got JJ and Ys. Then they got Bandit and Ares and Draco. And it just sort of inflated from there, as ferrets tend to do. She lived a long, fun-filled life, in which she got to interact with a dozen different ferrets, and many loving humans. It’s hard to think of a better life for a ferret, except to have it be even longer.

Nyx with adrenal hair loss
Nyx with adrenal hair loss
Sleepy Nyx
Sleepy Nyx

Now Jack-Jack and Ys have one of their original playmates back again. Play on, fur-kids!