To All Mira's Friends:

Sorry, I have not updated you all recently about Mira's recent progress! One of us has been away on business for a week, and the other has barely kept her head above water with incoming, outgoing and regular working duties!

But to Mira!!

About 10 days ago, Mira was brought to Tufts for a consultation. While most of her burns have healed amazingly well, we have been having difficuly with her left arm. The area under her arm is not healing as quickly as the rest of her body, and is still moist and raw. Complicating things, has been that scar tissue is constricting the vein and it was causing her entire left leg and foot to swell to almost twice normal size. Our vet had to make an incision under her arm to relieve some of the pressure, and she was placed back on antibiotics as a preventative measure. (A FACT member who is a nurse and familiar with burn treatments in humans told us that it is not uncommon to have to do similar procedures on humans when scar tissue causes this type of swelling). Our vet's principal fear was that Mira might have to have the leg removed if we couldn't get the swelling under control. So we went off to Tufts for a consultation.

The vet at Tufts felt that, for the present, Mira is doing as well as can be expected. She also indicated that she didn't think that Mira would ultimately have to loose the leg, and that we had done what we could with the incision and antibitoic treatment. She did say, however, that Mira needed continued gentle excercise (she lives with our elderly group now and they are just wonderful with her); that she needed to try to elevate her foot (she dearly loves to lay on her back in a low-slung hammock we have in the room); and that we needed to massage her leg daily - which we continue to do.

As for longer term prognosis, she recommended a consultation with their reconstruction specialist - though in her opinion, anything he might do would probably be experimental in nature. That visit is scheduled for next week.

As for Mira's spirits, they continue to be amaze us! She actually has some hair growing in spots on her back (a little of which had to be shaved for her impromptu surgery to relieive scar pressure) and while she is favoring her right leg more than before, she still gets precsiely whereever she wants to be -- including climbing into baskets and into her low hammock to sleep with a couple of the warmer, little old people!

She can navigate a 3 foot length of tube and will happily pull out shoe inserts and squash plastic bags with abandon. Mira has no idea that she is "handicapped" and the little old ferret-people certainly don't mind a quiet, little youngster who doesn't insist on jumping them every 30 seconds, so the housing arrangements suit everyone just fine!

So everyone knows, FACT does not house our ferrets in cages. Our elderly (as well as our adoptees) have separate dedicated rooms with sleepy spots and toys and a varietal tray of food to pick on. So, she appears to be quite content.

We will continue to post about her progress, periodically!

Ann Gruden - FACT