Last night our ferret Mufassa was doing something I've never heard of
or seen in a ferret. It has to be something medical going on but my
vet doesn't know what it is and neither do I. Mufassa has a bit of a
history so I will describe the history then I'll try and describe the
symptoms.

He is a 7 year old DEW. He spent his first 3 years at the breeder who
treated him very badly. Mufassa is deaf but he has nose like an eagle.
He was a terrible bitter which is why he ended up in our family (we've
had success rehabbing bad biters before). It took nearly 7 months to
get past the biting and now he is the sweetest ferret you could ever
know.

He was neutered after he was purchased from the breeder but not
descended. He developed adrenal disease and had his left adrenal gland
removed. The adrenal disease came back within a couple months. We had
a deslorin implant put in back in February. He developed a bad tooth,
lost 9 ounces. We started to feed him pureed chicken and he had a
dental and removal of one molar and a couple incisors. The deslorin
implants effectiveness seemed to decrease and his hair started to thin.
Since his dental he does eat kibble but he doesn't seem to eat enough
to keep his weight up. We've been feeding him pureed chicken (15 mls
with 25 mls water, now I've been told that this is too much but he eats
it all and looks for more and will go and eat kibble right after the
chicken). He gets the chicken 3 times a day. We went to 2 times a day
but he lost 2 ounces in three days so we went back to 3 times a day.
His fur on his neck and back started to turn orange (more signs of the
adrenal disease coming back). We also had two more who needed an
implant. They cost around $190 each so we've been saving for them. The
last couple weeks the orange was getting more pronoucned and he started
to get a little more aggressive.

Now to what he did last night. He was sitting in his cage and he tried
to raise up (prairie dog like but fell over to his left and back. He
did this 4 times in a row. I took him out of his cage and put him on
the floor to see him walk. He was not lethargic but we walking his
normal speed but would do the following fall to his side, fall forward,
try and prairie dog and fall over backwards. His movements were a bit
jerky. I thought maybe insulinoma and low glucose. I made him some
chicken and sit him on the counter. He was kind of sitting on his
behind and when he tried to put his head down to eat he would jerk it
back up and almost roll over backwards or fall over to his side. He
did finish his food. He still continued to act this way, I was very
concerned and bewildered at this. I was becoming very scared and
concerned so I gave him 0.5 ml of 1mg/1ml prednislone. A few minutes
later he did have some dry heaves and pawed at his mouth once. I gave
him a big dose of Nutracal and 15 min later I gave him another 0.5 mls
of prednisolone. He did improve but you could see in his eyes that he
wasn't feeling good. He slept for a couple hours and I fed him chicken
again. Through the night he got the chicken every 2 - 3 hours. In the
morning he got one dose of pred and was still getting the chicken. Now
he looked better in the way he acted and in his eyes. I continued with
the chicken every 2 - 3 hours. I could not take him to the vet until
2 in the afternoon and that morning our vet called to tell me the
deslorin implants were in. Also he didn't have his head tilted or
anything like that he would sniff the air a lot but he has a super nose
and is deaf and he sniffs a lot anyway, it was just accentuated because
of his jerkiness. I hope this makes some sense its kind of tough to
describe.

Our vet examined Mufassa. Heart and Lungs sounded good, ears okay,
teeth good, physical assessment good. 7 year old ferret still with good
muscle tone temperature normal. Mufassa was more active than I'd seen
him in a year. He appeared very curious, alert, and relaxed. The old
implant was right next to the skin and you could almost grab it an pull
it out. We lanced it and slipped the old one out. His blood glucose
level was 191. Too high for it to be insulinoma but too low to be
diabetes as diabetic ferret glucose levers are usually higher.

We don't know what it was. Maybe his adrenal disease had returned with
a vengeance and there was some type of hormone spike or something???

Our plan is to watch him closely and to wean off the prednisolone. We
did implant a new Deslorin Implant so if it is the adrenal disease that
caused it then the implant should help.

Has anyone seen anything like this? He looked really really bad last
night. I thought we were going to end up losing him.

Tonight he looks perfectly normal, like last night didn't happen.

Thank you

Mike

[Posted in FML 6886]