Violet in her Condo

On May 16, we met Violet the ferret at a Mile High Ferret Club meetup. She was scrawny and bald from her middle to her tail. Our lovely ferret rescue, Ferret Dreams, had rescued her from a horrible situation. She’d been abandoned in a trailer to starve in her cage. Lee and Matthew, the rescue owners, took Violet to their vet, who diagnosed her with adrenal disease–a very common ferret illness.

The treatment tends to work well: The ferret gets melatonin pellets implanted under its skin, which then help control the disease. If that’s not enough, a shot of Lupron every four to six months does the trick.

We weren’t exactly looking for another ferret. We have three already, and two cats. But there was something about Violet that made me fall instantly in love with her … probably the idea that I could save her, give her a much better life.

Before we agreed to adopting her, Lee and Matthew had a full workup done because her spleen was incredibly enlarged. Some ferrets just have enlarged spleens. In others, it’s a sign of disease. The rescue’s vet said she had no other sign of disease, so I decided to adopt her with support from Steve and the children.

To improve her health, we immediately began force-feeding her 1cc by 1cc of my recipe for a high-calorie, high-protein, high-fat food mix we call The Chow. Within a week, she was perkier. Within two weeks, she was lapping at the Chow with Daisy, Jack and Teddy, her fur had grown back in to the start of her tail, and she was playing with Teddy, following him through tubes and under furniture, learning from him how to tackle going up and down stairs.

But after a couple of weeks, we noticed her energy waning again. We’d feed her, and she’d immediately have a runny poop then find a place to sleep. We made an appointment to see our ferret vet, Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald at Alameda East. That appointment got canceled, and we finally got her in last Friday. He felt her belly, and immediately suggested that we do an ultrasound, because he didn’t like what he felt.

Since the rescue pays her medical bills, we agreed to the $500 test. And we learned that she is full of lymphoma.

Lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes, is very common in animals and especially in ferrets. About 20 percent of ferrets will contract lymphoma, perhaps because of the inbreeding that’s rampant in the ferret world. Some ferret experts suspect that in older animals, lymphoma is caused by a virus they’ve not yet identified, but would be similar to Feline Leukemia (for which there is a vaccine). Older ferrets — say, over age 5 — tend to die with, rather than die from the disease. They respond to chemotherapy. The ferret vets think early onset lymphoma (before age 3, especially) is a different disease. It’s quite aggressive and does not respond well to any kind of chemotherapy.

We’re not quite sure how old Violet is, maybe 3, maybe younger.

Last Friday, Dr. Fitzgerald gave her a shot of prednisone–the first line of cancer treatment–with the hope that it would give her more time. From my experience as a cancer writer, and from treating my golden retriever Duncan for this same disease in 2002-2003,  I understand that chemo works by killing the tumor, and the dying cells can overload the body’s immune system, zapping it of energy. Then, the tumor cells shed, and the body recovers, and the energy comes back.

Since the pred injection, Violet has gone downhill. She has an excellent appetite, which is a good sign. When I take her out in our ferret-proofed garden, she’s interested and energetic. But otherwise, she is sleeping. Her breathing is rapid and shallow. She’s doing a lot of licking at her belly, which is big and full. She winces away when someone pets her below her shoulder blades. We wonder if she’s in pain. Google tells me that end-stage lymphoma can be painful, but it’s hard to assess pain levels in ferrets at all. I just got off the phone with the vet, who is giving us a prescription for pain meds–the same stuff that left our cat Noelle stoned and happy. I somehow have to figure out how to give her 1/10 of a 1cc dose.

The children now know about her, which makes me feel much better not having to keep the secret. They are both sad, but they are also not deeply attached to her. After all, she’s been with us for just six weeks, and most of that time she’s spent sleeping.

Still, Steve and I watched her this morning, and she does not have quality of life. After she had the Chow, she fell asleep in my lap–no playing at all. I’ve played phone tag with the vet for the past three days trying to report in and ask what we should do now.

Part of me wants to put her down this weekend, just so she won’t suffer anymore. But there’s always that question–is it too soon? Are we robbing her of a few days or weeks of love and life? Should we give her time for the chemo treatment to work, then hope she gets her energy back for a few weeks?

It’s one thing if a pet is acutely ill. When we put our ferret Pharley down last October, it was after 8 months of treatment for insulinoma. He’d reached a stage where he was having seizures. He was hardly eating, and his illness was causing great stress to Jack, his bonded friend. It was an easy decision to put him down at that point.

Violet’s illness is also causing stress among the other ferrets. I can see it in Teddy’s behavior (he’s become skittish where before he was playful) for sure–he’s the one who was bonding with her, but now he’s ignoring her. It’s also putting stress on me, on the kids, on Steve.

And yet, there’s that sense of doubt. When is the right time? How do we know if we’re keeping her alive to avoid our own pain at the act of putting her down? How does anyone ever make this decision?