Thanks for your reply,
 
Unfortunately Brute died this morning at 1:00 a.m. after returning from an
emergency visit to the vet.  I know about the ECE thing as I have taken
three of my others through it O.K.  As a said in my post, his diarrhea
started getting better finally last weekend, but Wednesday he started acting
strangely and his stool loosened again.  Well, last night he started having
some kind of fits and I was so frightened that I called the 24 hr vet
answering service and had vet meet me at the clinic at 11:30 p.m.  He
confirmed that these fits were neurological seizures and was baffled as to
what would cause them.  He didn't see any correlation to the diarrhea.  He
tried to take a blood sample from a back leg, a front leg, and neck
unsuccessfully.  I finally asked him to just c lip a nail short to take the
sample.  Mean while the place on his neck started to swell rapidly -
subdural hematoma.  While the vet ran a quick glucose test (came out good)
and began to mix up some meds to stop the seizures, I noticed that his neck
was still getting bigger and that his nail was still bleeding despite a
large amount of clotting powder.  I remembered a post a while back about a
strange reaction a ferret had to Tribrisen, the antibiotic my vet had
prescribed two weeks ago for the ECE.  I mentioned it to the vet and he
stopped what he was doing and immediately administered a vitamin K injection
as well as a cortisone injection to stop the bleeding and put some pressure
bandaging on his foot and neck.  He proceeded to mix up some Phenobarbital
to make the seizures stop and gave him the first dose.  He sent me home with
instructions to watch him closely for the next couple of hours and then
remove the bandages and call back in the morning if he wasn't better, but
the outlook was not good.  Well, he died in my arms at home thirty minutes
later.  The seizures did stop and he was comfortable, but the bleeding just
wouldn't stop.  Now he's gone...
 
The theory is in some remote cases, Tribrisen can cause hemorage problems.
The seizures were probably caused by a small hemorage in his brain and the
attempt to take blood from his neck caused a massive subdural hemorage that
eventually took its toll.  He was only with me for a month but he stole a
piece of my heart and took it with him this morning when he left....
 
CHERYL
[Posted in FML issue 1726]