Hi to all,
 
We believe that our Daisy is in the early stages of insulinoma.  Her
bloodwork shows her to be at the lowest "normal" point but she has had at
least three episodes that appear to have been related.  Each time we've
given her just a small amount of a sugary substance and she has come
around within a few minutes to her usual perky self.
 
1. I am trying to verify if giving her Vaseline rather than Kitty Malt
will work just as well for a hairball laxative.  I think I remember
reading that somewhere in the past, but does anyone know if it is true?
 
2. By cutting all sugary things from her diet (raisins and ferretvite)
she seems to be doing very well and has not had any additional episodes.
I know this means only that she is doing better since insulinoma does not
go away.  Our vet feels that doing the surgery really doesn't buy much
additional time and that when the time comes to start giving her
prednisone, and then possibly later on the addition of another medicine
along with it.  His opinion is that often there are many little nodules
(tumors?) on the pancreas that cause the condition and that even with
surgery they often reappear.  Our vet is very ferret-experienced and I
have a lot of faith in his surgical ability, but wondered what the life
span is that I should expect either way?  I am sure this has been
discussed several times but I haven't been reading the FML very
consistently for several months.
 
Thanks for any input!
Karla and Daisy
[Posted in FML issue 3796]