Simon is a two year old MF male, who came into the shelter a few weeks ago
with Chester.  They both came down with classic ECE symptoms (I think
another shelter resident is a carrier).  I started them immediately on
Pepcid AC, Colloidal Silver and duck soup, and after several days they
recovered and started eating on their own.  As recently as last Friday they
were both doing well, with Simon begging pieces of the banana I was eating.
 
Over the weekend though, Simon took a sudden turn for the worse.  He started
squirting out liquid dark green diarrhea, and vomitted a couple times.  I
tried force feeding him, but he just barfed it up a couple hours later.
Monday morning, I gave him some Carafate to try to coat and soothe his
stomach, and it came right back up.  He had lost an alarming amount of
weight in the last couple days.
 
Fearing a blockage, I took him that morning to our vet.  Dr. Turner did an
xray, which showed pockets of gas in the intestines.  I checked Simon in so
a barium series could be run.  After 2 hours most of the barium was still in
the stomach, so Dr. Turner did an exploratory that afternoon.  He found...
nothing!  No hairballs, no foreign objects, no signs of ulcers, nothing that
would explain why the barium (and food) was not moving through his system.
Dr. Turner called it a GI motility problem, but could not tell me what
caused it.
 
Today Simon is resting and recuperating from the surgery.  He is on Reglan,
Carafate and Tagamet.  A small section of the lining of his stomach has been
sent for biopsy.  I should be able to bring him home tomorrow.
 
I feel very bad for poor Simon that we put him through a surgery for
nothing.  But given the symptoms, what else could we do?
 
Has anyone else experienced something like this before?
 
Linda Iroff
North Coast Ferret Shelter West
"The Raisin Retreat"
http://www.oberlin.edu/~liroff/ncfs.html
[Posted in FML issue 2363]