>I had no idea that so many people had had ferrets with insulinoma who
>went into seizures while eating. It makes sense, though. A ferret who
>is close to seizing get dizzy and eats to try to correct that. If the
>insulinoma (or more aggressive forms of pancreatic illnesses like
>carcinoma based in the pancreas or lymphoma based in the pancreas,
>either of which sometimes have their first symptom being death from
>drastic blood glucose >drops) is either so advanced that it is hard to
>control, or is poorly controlled then the eating won't be sufficient
>at least some of the time to stop a seizure from happening.

I had a jill that eventually passed from insulinoma, when the tumors
had grown to the point that even Pred + diazoxide could no longer
control the BG.

Prior to that point, I found that the most common time for seizures
was shortly AFTER eating (high-protein soup).

My theory is that her system was WAY over-reacting to changes in blood
sugar, so when the BG rose somewhat after eating, her pancreas reacted
by flooding the system with insulin, causing a crash.

All I know for sure is that it was a very common pattern.

My strategies for managing insulinoma:

Frequent smaller high-protein meals (I fed her a soup made from all
parts of a chicken - 0 carbs, mostly protein and fat)

The name of the game is keeping the blood sugar levels constant. Try
not to do anything to cause them to start swinging because they're
unstable, and will go off the end.

When there is a seizure:
* Get sugar into them to stop the seizure (I kept a bottle of Karo
  syrup and some Q-tips handy)
* IMMEDIATELY follow up with a high-protein meal to keep them from
  crashing again.
* I'd usually give fluids, commonly with 1 ml 50% dextrose in 10-20 ml
  saline
* let them sleep it off, but monitor for another cycle.

Kevin Farlee

[Posted in FML 7147]