Re: my earlier post about Bandit; I took him in today and two ferret
vets, including a specialist at Angell Memorial in Boston, suspect
Exocrine Pancreatic Insuffiency as a possible diagnosis for my Bandit.
(We are also going to start treating empirically for possible
helicobacter and are running bloods and fecal and urinalysis at present.
 
Today his xrays showed an abdomen that was very angry-could not
differentiate organs well; palpation revealed a "string of pearls" in
the caudal abdomen.  Bloods in midApril were pretty unremarkable save for
his low BG (42-we raised his pred.  dose after that to the 0.4 mg BID)
and some mild anemia.  He is actually up to 750g today, and some weight
gain can be an odd effect of this disease, despite the continued
malabsorption and anorexia/cachexia.
 
The mild anemia, eating of the feces (coprophagia), color and consistency
of the feces, and the other symptoms seem to point to EPI as a
possibility.  It is not unheard of, apparently, in ferrets, but pretty
uncommon-Dr. Orcutt at Angell said she'd never had a case in a ferret.
 
Anyhoo, has anyone here ever encountered this in a ferret in their care?
 
Any help would be appreciated!
 
-April and Bandit
 
PS We are raising his pred dose to 0.45mg BID to accomodate hsi weight
gain, starting Viokase in his food, starting Amoxi, flagyl, continuing
sucralfate and pepcid; the tests you can do for EPI/TPI are
species-specific for dogs and cats, and even for them a lot fo the advice
points to just starting the pancreatic enzyme supplement (Viokase in our
case) and seeing how the pet does.
 
Original post: "<snip> ...Bandit is an almost-7-yr-old insulinomic on
prednisone 0.4mg twice a day.  He was drug-free for a year, and we
started with lower doses of pred back in December, when he lost half his
body weight and started showing symptoms a week after his best friend
died.
 
Since then, he has lost two other friends and has taken it all really
hard.  He has hind end weakness, occasional diarrhea (partly, I think,
b/c his latest batch of chicken gravy was too liquidy), eats Bob Church's
chieckn gravy modified for insulinomics, and gets along great with my
other two remaining ferrets, who are younger and more active than he is.
 
We added two more ferrets to the group within the last month (they were
quarantined for three or four weeks first, ADV-tested, otherwise tested,
etc.  and not introduced until this past week, after they'd been here
long enough not to be stressed themselves and be shedding any
stress-induced viruses).
 
Bandit has been getting along fine with them-in fact, they pretty well
leave him alone, as if they know he's frail, and did not end up bein any
sicker or seem stressed, have more diarrhea than normal, etc.
 
Today he started having brown, greasy, somewhat seedy diarrhea than has
been getting on him.  My biggest concern with this is that he has been
eating it-EWWWW!-and not just what gets stuck to him; I caught him
licking it off thr floor.
 
Any ideas as to why (I thought perhaps the chicken gravy was going
through him and that's what it tasted like to him) and how I can get it
to stop?  I don't want him getting sicker from eating feces...."
[Posted in FML issue 4882]