Page 35 - Winter 18-19

Ulisse the Ferret by Cinzia Ciarmatori, Italy
Ulisse is a male ferret. He has been adopted from an Italian kennel and lives with Anna Maria, a middle aged woman who has lived with one or more ferrets for the last 20 years. Anna Maria has two children and the son, Piero, lives in the same building and spends a lot of time with Ulisse.
Ulisse is a self-confident ferret, he is well socialized, goes out on a leash with Anna Maria daily, has many toys available and an entire apartment. He eats everything, he likes homemade mayonnaise and dried meat. He doesn’t like to be scolded and he is hypersensitive to noise.
Up to two years of age he did not present any particular problems. He is annually vaccinated for distemper with distemper-hepatitis vaccine because in Italy there aren’t vaccines solely for distemper, nor registered vaccines for ferrets.
On November 16 2017 Anna Maria brought Ulisses to the clinic because she had noticed sneezing and nasal discharge and that he was slightly lethargic. At this visit the clinical condition was good; there was a slight increase in temperature and serous nasal discharge. I asked if someone in the house had had the flu, because ferrets are receptive to human flu and the answer was yes, Piero had had fever and cold in the previous week. I recommended Anna Maria to keep Ulisse warm and at rest in the house and I prescribed acetylcysteine via aerosol.
The next day the caretaker called and reported that Ulisse was already improving, he was more active and the sneezes had decreased.
On the evening of November 21st Anna Maria called and asked for an appointment for the next morning because according to her the situation had worsened.
Ulisse had a dry cough especially during the night, he wasn’t eating a lot and she observed that the cough was exasperated by warm food, which he had always preferred. She confessed to having started an antimicrobial therapy with enrofloxacin for three days on her own, because according to her the antibiotic was necessary for the flu, just like for the son...
On the morning of November 22nd, Ulisse got considerably worse: he presented with depression of the sensory, dysorexia, severe dyspnoea and cyanosis with thoracic-abdominal disagreement. Blood tests, radiographs of the chest, thoracic and abdominal ultrasound and echocardiography were urgently performed. Ulisse was kept in a humidity chamber with oxygen therapy in the meantime.
There was a moderate thoracic effusion but the cytology of the aspirate was not diagnostic. Radiographic and
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