As some may know Chaos has been struggling with an illness for a few months now. Many x-rays, bloowork etc.. all came up fine for the longest time. Exams were done many times too of couse they could tell the obvious that he was sick but the cause was unkown. Well he started to get worse again so we went back to the vets last Sat. We now have an answer, lymphoma. As sad as it is it is at least known. We are still unsure what part of his body is affected as nothing is showing up on x-rays & he can't handle an exploratory or an MRI. He's been on so many meds, treatments & supplements that its not even funny & nothing is really helping a whole lot.
For the last 3 months or so Chaos's ears have been spotless. Not one drop of earwax anywhere. Has anyone ever had a ferret with lymphoma or even a ferret in general like that? I found that to be very odd but I thought maybe someone else was grooming him or something.
I woke up this morning (just about 3-4 hours after I checked on him last) and you couldn't even see his ear. The whole side of his face was all bloddy fur... just starting to dry. I took a warm moist compress to it & loosened up all the junk. I got to the ear but before I really cleaned it out I wanted to see if the blood was coming from in his ear or outside. Well his ear canal was spotless. So I cleaned the rest of it up & I can't see where it would come from. No scratches, puntures anything on his whole body. I even took a q-tip & gently cleaned out his ear, again nothing as his canal was spotless. But I did notice that when I was cleaning it off that the fresher stuff (under the almost dried blood) it was gooey like. And boy does it smell, REALLY bad. Almost like death.
He still smells BAD (only coming from his ear) but the discharge has not returned yet.
And he's really out of it. Very wobbly, spacey but still lovey & doesn't seem to be in pain.
We had a vet appointment this morning anyway. The vet has never heard of anything like this before. He has a few wild guesses but still isn't sure.
- He may have some type of tumor or odd & rare disease or something in his brain putting pressure on his ear/brain. Because Chaos was laying on his side & some of the discharge was goopey/slimey that it kind of stuck together & flushed clear out of his canal on its own.
-that something punctured his inner ear or something, but couldn't see anything with his scope. And there's nothing slim & pointy in Chaos cage that could of done that.
The vet says he'd need to do an MRI or an exploratory surgery to get a better idea of what caused it. But Chaos can't handle either. He's deteriorated quite a bit since Monday night.
The vet wants me to keep an eye on it. If the discharge comes back to bring him in before I clean it up. He gave him & me some antibiotics, pain meds, I got more fluids & pred. We spoke about Chemo & supplements like Pau d'arco which he has heard of but knows nothing about. He's doing some re-search for me on that and his ear.
Had more blood drawn, came up the same as at the dog vet. His BG was fine.
The vet agrees with me that he smells like death. It is a raunchy smell. Not rotten, or vomit, diarrhea, nothing like that... just death. He noticed it as soon as he walked into the room. Sad But its only coming from his ear. The rest of him actually smells like vanilla & I don't own or wear vanilla?
Because Chaos is not doing good at all and he has this unkown problem with his ear the vet thinks it is best to wait a little while before wwe do the Chemo on him if we do it will be the L-sparganine (sp?. Thanks Laura for all your info!
Right now I am just keeping him comfortable & seeing if he can get him to improve even just a little bit, enough to where he can handle the Chemo &/or an MRI.
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? My nerves & emotions are just shot right now. I feel so bad for him. I wish there was something I could do for him.
Oh there was a little bit of good news out of this. His belly isn't as swollen & the bruising is almost gone. He has a prolapsed (sp?) rectum now so he's getting some prep H too.
I know there aren't too many ferret people here but if anyone has any info that may help we appreciate it.
He needs some major PT magic prayers though. If you can spare any he really needs them.
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So many PT pets are ill right now. Hopefully you might find out the cause. I don't know much about ferrets, so I'm not too helpful. Poor boy, at least he's not in pain.
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