Ella May Be In Trouble, Zephyr Losing Weight

Due to the winter storm last week the vet appointment for Ella was put off until tomorrow morning. In the meanwhile, over the last couple of days, Ella has become very obviously ill. She can barely open her right eye at all and both eyes are watery. She's also had two serious bouts of diarrhea over the last five days with normal output in between. Ella has also always really loved rough play. The last two nights she's come to me to play with her as always. When she does, though, if I touch her belly much she vocalizes discomfort and play ends. That, combined with her blood test results from January 18th, especially her elevated globulin, have Dr. Powers thinking that Ella may have intestinal lymphoma. That would be truly horrible news.

Dr. Powers will call me back later today with, in her words, "lots of questions" when she's done with her current patient. She doesn't feel like coming in this evening instead of tomorrow morning will make a difference, so for now the plan is to keep tomorrow's scheduled appointment and do more diagnostic work to determine for certain what is wrong with Ella.

In the meanwhile Ella ran around and explored like always last night, is eating and drinking normally, and has plenty of energy so I am hoping against hope for better news when the tests are done.

I am also very concerned about Zephyr who has lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time and also has had on again, off again diarrhea. Like Ella there has been no drop off in Zephyr's activity level and her appetite is just fine. Like Ella she isn't bouncing as much and is avoiding rough play.

Whenever one of the other ferrets is sick Chin Soon tends to stick to them like glue. I saw this with a then eight year old Nyssa during the final month or two of her life. Chin Soon was Nyssa's constant companion then and would curl up and sleep with her. Chin Soon is doing that with Zephyr now which also worries me.

Ella is just two week short of the seventh anniversary of her rescue so she is right around eight years old. Zephyr is six weeks away from the sixth anniversary of her rescue and is roughly seven. Both are considered old in ferret terms. I'm still not ready to lose either one of them.

I'll post more when I know more.