Minion » The Chubby Ferret

Minion is gone

Feb 082013

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

Ferret-a-day 2 Responses »

Feb 062013

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

Ferret-a-day 2 Responses »

Feb 032013

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…

Ferret-a-day 3 Responses »

Feb 022013

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

Ferret-a-day 1 Response »

Feb 012013

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.