Bad News and Possibly Worse News

[Tink]

Well, we are back from Monkey's exam. I set something up because I have been feeling fairly certain that he is early adrenal.
The doctor is fairlly confident Monkey is Adrenal just from his examination today.
Today we gave him a shot of Lupron in the left hind leg. We need to hold off on scheduling Adrenal surgery though because there is another problem.
The lesions on his stomach that I was treating as mast cell tumors are not actually mast cell nor sebaceous tumors like I had thought. She thinks they may be indicative of Subcutaneous Lymphoma which she has only seen once before in a ferret and is a somewhat rare presentation of lymphoma but still possible. She wants to biopsy the lesions and find out if we are dealing with Lymphoma first. If it is in fact Lymphoma then we need to evaluate his prognosis in that respect before we perform Adrenal surgery.
I've got him scheduled for the biopsy on the 3rd but there is money that may be coming through to me for my recently won disability case and if it happens sooner rather than later then I will have it done sooner than that, which is what I am hoping for and would prefer.

[PoshPuss]

So sorry Tink, such a worry for you :( Is Monkey suffering? What is the prognosis for this disease? Hope your fears are relieved soon and that Monkey will be able to be treated.

[Tink]

Thank you. At this point, he is not suffering. You can tell he is starting to lose his hair on his ribcage and tail and there are lesions on his stomach.
The Adrenal he has a good chance to live a normal life if it is the left adrenal gland that is affected ONLY (if it is the right we are out of luck because that is intertwined with the vena cava and not realistically operable, very small survival rate for that surgery though it has been done once in a blue moon but the odds are stacked against that and it is hard to even find a surgeon who thinks they will be able to pull it off without killing them during the operation).
The Lupron will help with the physical symptoms which is hair loss and some behavior issues because this disease causes their hormones to be out of sync. So the Lupron he got today will help for awhile so that he can look a bit more "normal". He is itchy and overproducing oil in his skin which is another side effect the Lupron should alleviate too.
Surgery is the only cure for the disease and if you catch it early enough and it has not spread to the right gland then he has every chance of beating this. Many adrenal glands that are removed are benign but in some cases they are malignant. We will have to see once that surgery is performed. So you can see why I'm quite anxious to get on with it already while he still has a chance to be a normal ferret.
If they remove it and it presents in the right gland then he may eventually die from complications of Adrenal Disease but will still have quality of life for several years in most cases with Lupron injections and some people also use Melatonin implants.
So it's definitely not a death sentence. But at some point usually the Lupron stops being effective and they will go completely bald. Many other things may happen such as problems urinating..the list goes on..but there's still hope.
What I am really scared about is the chance of Subcutaneous Lymphoma. Lymphoma does not usually have a very good prognosis in ferrets. We can buy him some quality of life time by starting Prednisone and there are some people that say they have done radiation but I really don't know about that and it is supposed to be incredibly expensive to try.
Sorry, ended up writing a novel. Basically if this skin biopsy comes back benign, he probably has several good years left. If it comes back malignant, then his time could be very limited and she may not even bother performing adrenal surgery if it has already significantly spread/progressed enough to not ensure a good rate of survival or that he would have quality of life afterward. Neither are good news but I'd much rather he had a couple more years with us :(

[angieh]

So sorry to hear about Monkey's problems Tink. I know that you and your very knowledgeable vet will do whatever is best for him.

[farthing]

Sorry to hear this, Samson had skin lymphoma and had a good number of months being very well. When you talk about adrenal gland problems do you mean Cushings or Addisons- I know dogs can have quite a good quality of life with it.

[Mags]

Sorry to hear about Monkey's problems, Tink....

[Shelley123]

very sorry to hear about Monkey, Tink and hope you can get the biopsy done soon. Lets hope for an outcome that can be treated and give him some good years.

[dandysmom]

Fingers crossed it will be treatable and he'll have more time with you .....

[Tink]

When you talk about adrenal gland problems do you mean Cushings or Addisons- I know dogs can have quite a good quality of life with it.

I am not sure if it would be considered either of those. It's a very common problem in ferrets in the United States due to the large majority of domesticated ferrets here being produced from ferret mills and therefore having poor genetics. Here's some more info on it
http://www.ferret-universe.com/health/adrenal.asp


and more on lymphoma~
if you scroll to the bottom you will see the note about if they have other conditions like adrenal they are poor candidates for chemo :(

http://www.ferret-universe.com/health/lympho.asp