Kim and Bob,

We had a ferret with diabetes several years ago. As best we could tell,
it was brought on because Pepper was prescribed prednisone to treat a
leg injury (not insulinoma). Pepper survived for more than a year, and
was usually her perky self, but she did have a crisis every few months.

It is important to have a vet who has experience with diabetic ferrets.
A dose of 0.1 units seems awfully low to me. Pepper's maintenance dose
varied from 0.5 units to 1.0 units PZI over the course of the year. Our
original vet had had her on a much lower dose, and we were going crazy
trying to keep up with her blood glucose until we got better care.

You can give diabetic ferrets subcutaneous fluids, and it is very
important to keep them hydrated. Diabetic ferrets pee a lot to try to
flush their system. I'm sorry I don't recall what formulation of fluids
we gave, and I don't want to give you the wrong information. Naturally,
any way you can get Bob to drink is good too, so see if he likes
bottles, bowls, or spilled water.

We did most of our monitoring of Pepper with urine dips, the kind that
tests both glucose and ketones. Our vet warned us that this wasn't very
accurate, but it was low stress for all involved, and gave us a good
idea what was going on with her. We also bought a kitchen scale to
track Pepper's weight down to the gram. This is something we now do to
track the health of all our ferrets.

Best of luck,
Joel

[Posted in FML 5691]