hi everyone
 
one of our fuzzies, fetch, just had adrenal surgery about two weeks
ago.  he's doing great now.  he's just as "fetchy" as he was before but,
there's one problem.
 
fetch started off by having that classical sign of adrenal disease...hair
loss.  but the weird thing was that he also started getting these strange
blisters/ hot spots on his body.  they didin't seem to bother him, but we
were really worried.  they would form scabs, but i was afraid that they
would get infected because he was biting at them.  he acted like they
didn't hurt, but it looked painful to me.  poor fetchy looked horrible!!
hair loss was bad enough, and then to have scabs too...he was a mess!
poor guy!  so anyways, we obviously made a vet appointment for him right
away.
 
to no surprise he was diagnosed with adrenal disease.  our vet said that
the blisters/ hot spots were a result of an hormonal imbalance from
adrenal disease.  he said it caused ferrets to excessively itch, which
was what was happening to fetch.  so that day we scheduled surgery for
fetch for the following week.  we were also sent home with a prescription
for melatonin.  he said it would help to relieve the itchiness and help
him to grow his hair back.
 
so we started giving him the medicine that night, and a week later he
had surgery (one adrenal gland removed, amongst other things, of course).
well, it's been about two weeks now, and his incision has healed
wonderfully and he's as happy as ever.  however, he's starting to get
those blisters again.  so tomorrow i'm going to call the vet and see what
he thinks.
 
anyways, i was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to one
of their fuzzies and what was done to fix it.  or if anyone had any
advice or stories that were similar that they could share with us.
 
two other fuzzies of ours have had surgery for insulinoma/adrenal disease
previous to fetch.  actually, we've had three surgeries in about two and
a half months.  the other two that had surgey never had these problems.
one , bear, had the hair loss (but it's grown back now), but not the
blisters/hot spots.  the other one, obie, luckily had none of the
symptoms of adrenal disease.
 
we love him to death no matter what he looks like.  i'm not concerned
with how long it takes him to grow his hair back, if he even gets it all
back.  we're just worried about his "boo- boo's."
 
any info would be greatly appreciated!!!!
 
thanks,
melanie
 
p.s. thank you to all of those that gave us suggestions on cheap litter
for multiple ferrets.  we've been using the wood stove pellets.  they
work great!!!!!
 
p.s.s. we've recently adopted (more like saved) two new fuzzies from
another family.  we now have eight fuzzy babies (hashi, bear, obie,
sugggie, fetch, kobe, vinny, and kodos) !!!!!!!!!!!
[Posted in FML issue 4268]