(I apologize in advance for the length of this post.)
 
In September, I got a ferret from a woman in one of my classes.  She'd
bought the ferret (as a baby) about 4 years ago for her son, and he now had
to go away for a year and couldn't take care of it.  She (the mother) didn't
want to take care of it, and no one else in the family wanted it either.
 
When I went to pick up the ferret (Nikki), she was in her cage in the garage
(she'd been there for quite a while; she 'smelled too much' to be in the
house).  The cage had no litter pan; just cat litter in the tray beneath the
wire bottom.  The litter had been cleaned for my arrival, but there were
cobwebs and dust on the cage itself.  Nikki had been fed generic
grocery-store cat food.  She had two hammocks, but no other toys in her
cage.  She was very skinny - she felt like a sack of bones.  The woman who
gave her to me is very sweet, and was not intentionally neglecting Nikki;
she just didn't know much about ferrets.  To her credit, she said that Nikki
was current on her shots; also, she was giving her to me because she knew
that she couldn't take proper care of her, and wanted to give her to someone
who could.
 
I got home with Nikki and gave her a bit of Ferretone, which she took
eagerly, while I examined her more closely.  She had a balding spot on top
of her head, and the fur on her stomach and chest was very thin.  Her teeth
were in awful shape: brown, dull, and broken, with the right upper canine
completely missing and the left upper canine a near-translucent brown.  She
also had trouble walking.  Every few steps, her hind legs would slip out
from under her.  I first attributed this to my slick hardwood floor, but it
persisted even on carpet.  There were small red scabs along her head and
neck, down to her shoulders, and her skin was dry.
 
I've been feeding her Iam's kitten food, and giving a bit of Ferretone every
2 or 3 days.  She's more energetic, and seems to walk a little better, but
is still terribly scrawny - when she curls up on her back, you can clearly
see her ribs and sternum beneath her skin.  The top of her head is still
bald, and the bald spot on her chest is larger.  The scabs and skin dryness
are still present.
 
When my check came in (mid-November), I took her to the vet.  She did a CBC,
skin scraping, vet (serum) profile, and creat/cortisol ratio (urine test).
According to the vet, everything was mostly normal, except that she was a
bit dehydrated, and a couple of things were a bit high or low.  I have the
results here in front of me (but don't know what all of it means), and ALKP,
TP, and GLOB show up high, while ALT and CREA are low; everything else is
normal.  The skin scraping (Buffy Coat Profile) came back negative for
external parasites.  The vet also checked Nikki's eyes: the pupils did not
respond to light at all, and the lenses are cloudy; Nikki is blind.
 
Based on the urine test (creatinine/cortisol ratio), the vet said Nikki did
not have adrenal disease.  However, she did not know what else it might be.
She thought the dry skin might be due to allergies, but that's all she could
come up with.
 
Nikki has almost all the syptoms of adrenal disease, except that her vulva
is not swollen and has no discharge; also, the pattern of hair loss is
backwards.  The tip of her tail is bald, but also has numerous blackheads;
her lower back has no bald areas.  She usually seems to have little energy:
when I take her out of the cage, she will walk around, sniffing at things,
for 10-15 minutes, then go to sleep under the bed or crawl back into her
cage and sleep.  She's gotten more energetic - today we went outside and she
walked and ran around for nearly an hour, but that's the longest I've ever
even seen her awake.
 
What might be wrong?  Something's obviously not right; she eats and drinks
well, but has gained almost no weight.  None of her hair has grown back in.
Her stool seems a little soft, but her excrement and urine is otherwise fine
(she hits the litterbox more often than Seth).  I can privately e-mail all
her test results to anyone wanting to see them.
 
I've read the disease FAQs, and it sounds more like adrenal than anything
else... I read that there is no reliable blood test for adrenal disease;
would this urine test be reliable, though?  Should I have her treated for
adrenal anyway?  Should I wait and see what happens?  Could it be some other
problem?.... I feel like I don't know anything.  :( :( :(
 
Any advice or suggestions would be more than welcome!!
 
Thanks,
Joyce Meadows
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[Posted in FML issue 2156]