Zane Archives - The Autism Dad

I need to clarify something so please give this a quick read

I wanted to take a minute and do two things. First, I want to thank you all for the love and support you've shown over the past few days. We all very much appreciate it. ☺ Secondly, I feel like I need to provide some clarification in regards to the pets we've lost over the last year. Some people have expressed concern the we've had 3 animals die in under a year and at least 2 of them were cancer related. There have been suggestions that we look into our environment to make sure there isn't a reason for them having cancer. I wanted to clarify a few things and hopefully, that will provide some context that you'd be missing if you haven't been following our story for long. In…

0 Comments

October 12, 2018

Autism Parenting Heartbreak / Family Pets / Ferrets / My thoughts / Zane

It’s been an incredibly long and heartbreaking day

I'm going to keep this super quick because I'm exhausted and if I can get the kids to fall asleep, I'm going straight to bed. It's been a really long day, full of tears and heartache. Yesterday I shared about a very difficult decision we might be having to make in regards to Zane, one of the boys service ferrets. You can check this link for the background. We took Zane back to the vet this morning and our worst fears were realized. Zane's back legs were now almost completely paralyzed and it was progressing quickly. He was much worse off this morning, then he was the night before. The vet explained that there were three possibilities. Unfortunately, all three possibilities involved tumors and none of them resulted in a…

3 Comments

October 10, 2018

Autism Parenting Insight / Family Pets / Ferrets / My thoughts / Zane

My wife and I have a very difficult #Autism parenting decision to make

Lizze and I may have a difficult decision to make in the morning. As you know, our ferret Zane has been very sick. Over the last week or so, he seemed to doing better and we were all quite relieved by that. Unfortunately, we're noticing that his back legs now seem to be partially paralyzed, which indicates possible neurological problems. I spoke with the vet last night and he's going to see Zane at 10am. We will try and figure out what we need to do but any of the tests that would need to be done would likely be in the hundreds of dollars and there's just no feasible way for us to pull that off. Anyway, the vet is going to advise us if it's either something that…

5 Comments

October 10, 2018

Fat Tiny / Ferrets / Life Lessons / My thoughts / Zane

Sometimes we can all use a friend

I'm not quite sure how Zane is doing. I know that sounds weird but at times he seems to be doing better and other times he seems to not be doing as well as I thought. Zane isn't contagious and has been on antibiotics for the last 5 days. We were told to keep him separate from the other ferrets because while he's not doing well, it's best to keep him isolated so he doesn't have to compete for food. It was something like that anyway. Last night it occurred to me after Lizze and I gave him his medicine, that he's been isolated for 5 days and that may be making things worse for him. Ferrets are incredibly social animals and they permanently bond with the other the ferrets…

3 Comments

October 6, 2018

Family Pets / Ferrets / My thoughts / Zane

Zane is finally showing improvement

Progress hasn't been easy but Zane is finally doing noticeably better. We've figured out a way to get him to take his antibiotics that has proven largely successful. He's better maintaining his body temperature, although we do have a space heater helping him in that area. Zane is starting to eat and drink on his own again. He's using the litter box and it seems likes his system is getting back on track. We are still keeping him isolated but only for a couple more days, maybe less. He's got another few days of antibiotics and hopefully, he'll start gaining weight again. We've all been so worried about him and are relieved to see him getting better. We can't wait to see him back to his crazy, hyper, bouncy and…

5 Comments

October 3, 2018