Dear Sara:
>We had a four year old spayed female come into the shelter who was on
>.6 cc of Prelone syrup (5 mg/5 ml) twice a day for insulinoma.  The person
>who gave her up said her vet had never discussed the possibility of
>surgery with her.  This ferret would crash if she didn't get her
>prednisone doses every 12 hours.  So we scheduled surgery, and the vet
>says that her pancreas looked absolutely normal!  No tumors to be seen.
>Her liver was very pale and fatty, which he didn't like, and he went ahead
>and took a piece of the pancreas.
 
Every once in a while you come across an obvious insulinoma patient but
can't find a nodules.  Sometimes they are diffuse and small and don't
jump out at you, even as you palpate the pancreas.  In these cases, we
have found that removal of a part of the pancreas, the lobe that does not
contain the ductwork that conducts the pancreatic secretions to the
intestine, mind you!  - can be beneficial.  In fact, partial pancreatectomy
has a longer post-surgical disease-free interval than nodulectomy alone.
So it depends upon how large a piece he took - perhaps he did a partial
pancreatectomy, and did not properly communicate the extent of the surgery
to you.
 
The liver is probably just fat accumulation, which can happen readily in
a ferret that is not eating.  It represents a physiologic response rather
than any disease process.
 
Keep watching that glucose closely.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM
[Posted in FML issue 3322]