(no subject)

[alonewiththemoon]

I hate it that I have become one of the Ferret Health List's resident knowledgable people regarding lymphoma. I've lost three to it, but it was different variations each time so I have learned about many different aspects of it. It's a horrible disease, and each time I face it it's been worse. Cully slipped away gently as the lymphoma affected his bone marrow, and he went very peacefully. Amelia fought against the tumor in her chest that pressed on her heart and lungs, but in the end I had to make the decision for her to stop fighting. And poor little Pan just became physically weaker and weaker but kept the mind of a young ferret, so frustrated by his weakness, until it went into his kidneys and poisoned him with kidney failure.

If I ever win the lottery, I will fund a research program somewhere in ferret lymphoma research. It breaks my heart sometimes that I can't just do that kind of thing--if I were rich, that's where my money would go.

Comments

[rojagato.livejournal.com]

The Morris Foundation?

Lymphoma in all its permutations is an old persons' disease--barring diabetes, it's what gets you if CAD, solid tumor cancer, and pneumonia doesn't get to you first.

Given that ferrets just don't generally have the lifespan to get the those three, they'd (sadly) make an excellent animal model for lymphoma. Could we find someone at Tufts Vet School and at Angell and help them write a grant? Maybe something along the lines of the Framingham Heart Study, where everyone anal-retentively records where the ferrets were bred, everything the ferrets eat, and every vet visit, and a detailed post-mortem, and so on, which almost everyone on the FML does anyway. Flavia and Dr Ritzman would be into it, I bet.

[alonewiththemoon]

I know that Bruce Williams along with a couple of other vets were researching the possibility of a viral cause for a predisposition to lymphoma--I don't know the correct scientific jargon, but my understanding is that the theory is that when ferrets are exposed to a particular virus somewhat similar to a parvovirus, that virus re-writes some of their cells in a way that enables them to develop lymphoma later (this would be the adult version, not the juvenile version). Not all ferrets who were exposed to the virus will develop lymphoma, but the conditions are created to make it possible. This helps to explain the somewhat common phenomenon of households that experience clusters of lymphoma, because presumably all of their ferrets were exposed to this virus around the same time. Dr. Williams was very close to identifying the virus, but the funding ran out and since he's still a military vet, he doesn't have free choice as to what projects to work on, especially if things of more direct military relevance come up.