It's been going on for almost a year if not longer

Here is an over view of what we are dealing with.

First of all he is about 5 years old, he was adopted almost 2 years
ago. His previous owners let the kids take care of him. He was very big
when we adopted him, it was believed at the time he didn't get out of
the cage much, but he loses a lot of weight in the summer and gains it
in the winter. He is not very agile and we affectionately call him our
"Rolly-Polly" but in the summer we have to call him slim. We also
believe he was fed dog food but we don't how much or for how long. Here
we feed him a 50/50 mix of Supreme and Sheppard and Green. The only
treats he likes are N-Bones and the Nacho Sheppard and Green Treats.

He has never been very active but when he does play he doesn't appear
to be very agile. For the last 6 - 10 months he doesn't play much he
usually just finds a quite place to sleep. He comes out to either eat
or find another spot to sleep. There have been a couple times when he
has played so much I hardly recognized him. He ran faster than I have
ever seen him (and most of the other ferrets we have). He would pounce
on anyone or anything near by, but that was only a couple times).

He has a very large spleen (almost the biggest our vet has seen in
a ferret) as big as a small dogs spleen. This may contribute to his
decreased agility.

His stools can range from normal to mud like or mucoid, sometimes green
but mostly brown and sometimes kind of seedy. He has had some kind of
stomach bug (3 - 4 times) for which we gave him antibiotics. We have
tested his glucose several times and it was always normal. The last
time it was high at 150. (he was also getting .8ml of 1mg/1ml of
prednisolone twice a day).

One evening several months ago Dakota started to walk funny kind of
ataxic, kind of sideways. He also looked very week and sick. I was
afraid that he may not survive until the next day when we could take
him to our vet. At the time we were thinking he may have IBD, Lymphoma,
Insulinoma, or food allergy. One treatment for all these conditions can
be prednisone. Since I was afraid he may not survive the night I gave
him .5ml of 1mg/1ml Prednisone (not prednisolone we switched to that
later). I also gave that same dose in the morning 4 hours before we go
him to the vet.

Our vet looked at the lymph fluid and did not seen any sign of lymphoma
but prednisone can mask lymphoma. Dakota looked he felt pretty good
and was wanting to explore the vets office. Ultra sounds did not show
anything out of the ordinary (but the ultra sound our vet has in his
office is not all that sensitive, our vet uses it to see if there is
anything obvious). Temperature and glucose were normal. He didn't
appear to be in any pain even during palpation. We decided to keep
treating with pred and watch him. Since then we moved him up on his
pred because he still had times where he walked funny, kind of
sideways, kind of awkward. We ended up at .8ml of 1mg / 1 ml
prednisolone twice a day. (prednisolone because he would lick it off
a spoon rather than having to force it by syringe like we had to with
the prednisone (He didn't want anything to do with prednisone).

Dakota has never been one to run around and play much pretty much a
couch potato. Then we notice he went from couch potato to door stop and
we took him in again. His sugar was 150, no signs of lymphoma in the
lymph fluid, no masses, no tenderness, no temperature. His stool sample
showed he had another stomach bug and we put him on antibiotics.

Now he is back to couch potato. Our vet wanted us to wean him down
to .2 ml twice a day. He is down to .4 ml twice a day now. On Friday
evening when we were putting the ferrets to bed after he received a
small dose of kitty malt for hair ball prevention, he started to act
like he was trying to vomit. We gave him .2 ml of the pink stuff (I
forget the name kind of like pepto bis mal). The next morning he looked
normal and a little more alert so we didn't go to the vets office. As
a treat before putting the ferrets away for bed time we give a small
amount of kitty malt on even days and ferret-vite on odd numbered days.
In the past we have given ferret lax and lax a tone, but it seemed that
Dakota would want to vomit afterward so we switched brands, kitty malt
seemed to be working fine until Friday.

I'm not sure what is going on with him. He seems to have something
going on with his stomach but I have no idea what it is. I would like
for him to be happy all the time but it appears that he isn't very
happy, most of the time. I'm thinking he is nauseous which is why he
is walking funny, doesn't want to play and only wants to rest.

Finally after all this we took him into our vet to get a complete work
up on him, and then maybe exploratory surgery.

They were able to (under anesthesia) do X-rays of the chest and
abdomen, blood work, and ultra sounds.

The X-rays and ultra sounds were very good we saw no tumors, no
granuality to any of the organs, no lumps, no irregularities, the
stomach was full of food. The only two things out of the ordinary was
he was fat (not surprising when you consider that he has been on pred
for months and he doesn't run around at all). The other is his right
lung was denser than you would expect. Not sure what this means because
he has not been coughing at all. One other thing while under anesthesia
for a minute it sounded like he had an irregular heart beat and maybe
a regurge but then it was gone and they never heard it again, and they
listened for 10 minutes. They also listened after he was awake and
didn't hear it either.

His blood work came back and it was quote "fantastic", nothing out of
the ordinary.

Our vet is going to think on it over the weekend and get back with me.

So we still have no idea what is going on. He is a couch potato, he
would rather sleep someplace than run around and play. When he does
move around he walks kind of funny, and looks awkward, and sometimes
falls over (not very often, I saw it once a couple days ago as he was
trying to decide to use or not use the litter box. He go in, then out
took two steps turned around go in, then got out took two steps turned
around, fell down on his side and then go up got into the litter box
and then finally did his business.

Our vet wanted to think it over some more over the weekend and then get
back with me, so I'll see what he comes up with on Monday.

Has anyone seen or heard of anything like this?

Thank you
Mike

[Posted in FML 6454]