A ferret friend sent me a link to an article in Pet Wiki about new advances in dog cancer, pointing me to the paragraph written by Dr Ananya Mandal in June 2010, which said …

“Queensland, Australia scientists have discovered a drug to cure cancer that has effectively worked in animals and is to be tried on humans in the next phase of trials. This drug is plant-derived and is called EBC-46 for trial purposes. The plant from which it is obtained is found in the Australian tropical rainforest. The drug has shown to reduce inoperable tumors in 150 dogs, cats and horses and a ferret to a significant extent. The drug was developed over the past six years from the seed of a rainforest plant found in the Atherton Tablelands. Scientists had cultivated their own plantation of the plant since forming the company QBiotics Limited in 2004.

I get a lot of emails from new and old-time ferret owners at my site asking me various questions about their ferrets, mainly asking for advice on what to do when their ferret is sick or asking questions about breeding.

Then a couple of years ago I read about Ferret Health Advancement at MSU.  Dr Matti Kiupel was doing a lot of research in a number of ferret illnesses, like coronaviruses, rotaviruses & coccidiosis. He’s also working with David Wilson researching the prognostication and carcinogenesis of adrenal cortical neoplasms. But, of course, with all things, money is necessary to further the research for these diseases so the department also has a page for donations.

I am extremely pleased to say that the report came back and gave him a clean bill of health!

His pancreas has a couple of benign growths on it — not the beginning of insulinoma as I had feared — and there’s nothing malignant lurking in any other areas so I am happy, very happy

I just don’t understand why he is losing his hair at the base of his tail – the classic adrenal starting point – and why my vet found that his fur on the inner sides of his back legs was looking thin too. Could it just be an odd looking rat’s tail and normal spring shedding which had both of us fooled?

I was watching this video and I found it so cute the way the ferret was so deeply asleep. It reminded me of Mash, our first ferret, who used to sleep so soundly that I could dangle her upside down and she wouldn’t wake up. But that was before we had our first insulinoma experience!

CJ was the first to get the disease and that made me realise how woefully unprepared we would have been with Mash had she been going through an insulinoma coma, and then I started thinking about how to identify between the two.

My brave little old lady lost her fight and died on Friday morning

I honestly thought she was going to be with us for longer, as she was so active when she was up. She used to power walk around the house, so fast that I had to scurry to keep up with her if I was trying to give her her medication or smoothy.