To Mikki and everyone else dealing with ECE.
 
I, too, am going through what you are.  I have 6 ferrets and 5 of them have
had (unofficially) ECE.  We're on the 8th week now and while I haven't lost
anyone yet, we're not out of the woods yet.  My two oldest both have other
medical problems (adrenal & insulinoma) so they were hit the hardest and
have each lost at least a third of their weight.  I have continued to feed
them my "duck soup" recipe (a/d, deliver, nutri-cal, petinic, & brewers
yeast) as well as meds and learned how to do the sub-Q hydration.  (Right
now I'm trying dexamethasone- 1/4 of a .25 mg tablet orally twice a day).
I fear that the wasting syndrome is continuing.  We have good days and bad
days.  Just when I think they're all better, someone has diarrhea again.
Can't seem to get rid of it for good.  The younger ones didn't get it as
bad and it didn't as last as long.
 
I feel that I'm having a nightmare and can't wake up & I've never felt so
helpless in my life.  I live in CA and the vets here have had little
experience with ECE.  The accepted treatment is amoxi, flagl and pepto----
which after 10 days I discontinued since no one got any better.  I got a
treatment from another ferret owner that seemed to work better.  She calls
it neo-albon and if I have any more cases of ECE in the future, this is
what I will start them on right away.  What it is is: 1 oz albon, 1 oz
kaopectate, 5 crushed centrine tablets and 40 mg predisone ( 2 crushed 20
mg tablets) fed orally @ .50 cc 3-5 times a day .  Her opinion is that the
diarrhea should be stopped ASAP, and I agree totally.  The longer it goes
on the harder it is for the ferrets to come out of it.  I also tried an
antibiotic called amforol.  (one tablet for each 20 lb animal--so I crush
one up and use just a trace in ferretone twice a day.) Results are
questionable--seemed to work at first but then we had a couple bad days and
I went back to the neo-albon then to the dexamethasone.  May try it again
as some respond better to some meds than others.
 
If anyone knows anything I'm overlooking here, please let me know.  I'm
lucky in that the vet I go to has been more than willing to try about
anything I read or heard about as he is learning about ECE along with me.
Looks like ECE is growing here in CA too.
 
Sorry this is so long but I thought I'd share this info with everyone in
hopes that it will help your furrkyds get on the road to recovery quicker.
There's no teacher like experience, believe me.  I may still lose two
precious members of my family which may have been prevented had I known
all this on day one.
 
Barb
[Posted in FML issue 2425]