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Date:
Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:46:24 -0700
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Sprout is still having difficulties. Since adding ensure he is more
willing to eat. The round the clock feedings is causing our supply of
pureed turkey to dwindle. We have a new turkey (which is thawing now)
and we will cook it and add more ingredients to the puree to increase
its nutritional value, taking from recipes offered from those ferret
wise friends from these mailing lists.

Sprout's weight is up a bit to 1 lbs 11.6 ounces that's two ounces up
from a few days ago. He has hit 1 lbs 12.1 ounces. He continues to eat
well for us. Today he still eats well but you can see in his eyes that
he doesn't feel good.

In a short amount of time we switched from chicken to turkey, added
ensure, and increased his pred.

I know we should not change multiple things at once but since he has
lost so much weight I just couldn't weight. I have tried increasing
his pred to 1 ml of the 1mg/ml prednisolone solution. It seems like
he started to gain more weight very soon after doing this and his
alertness was better and he even played with a ball yesterday. I'm not
sure if this would have occurred with the addition of the ensure alone
or not. Since he doesn't look like he feels well today I not so sure
whether the pred has helped or not.

Since he has lost so much weight and has been on pred for 4 months
(almost all of that time on .5 mls of a 1mg/ml solution) he is getting
the pred belly.

I do not and will not give up on him and he is looking better over all.
It looks like this will continue to be a long road for him.

If it is indeed ECE and he is having a very rough time with it he
should be able to recover as long as we keep working with him (and we
will). If it's a food allergy switching to turkey from chicken may
help. If its lymphoma then increasing the pred will help for a short
time. I just wish I knew what we were dealing with. The leading
possibility is ECE since that was diagnosed via biopsies and he has
had off and on foul smelling stools. Of course the ECE could have
triggered the other two. Hard to know what to think.

Our plan is to continue with what we are doing, Stay away from chicken
as much as possible, increase nutrition, round the clock feedings every
three hours, keep adding ensure (for now), and I'm considering cutting
back on the pred to either the original amount or .75mls.

Thank you to all who have offered advice and suggestions. There are so
many suggestions its hard to know what to do especially since there
are three different diseases that could be involved. Many of the
suggestions will work for all three so there is no harm in following
several of them.

I do need to follow up with our vet. I've been sending him email
updates and he usually calls me but so far he has not called in several
days. I was going to take him in on Saturday but he looked good and I
thought maybe we would be okay. The only difference today is he looks
like he doesn't feel good but he is still eating.

Thanks again

Mike

[Posted in FML 6742]


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