Hiya-
I was planning on writing tonight to share my own knowledge and experiences
with ketamine anyway, but awesome Dr. Dan, DVM, saved me some time by giving
a lot of that info in his post a couple of days ago.  In a nutshell, he said
that ketamine is a dissociative agent that basically rewires the brain so
that while it may receive pain signals (may "feel" pain) it doesn't
understand it as pain.  He also said that it was and maybe still is still
more common in human medicine than in vet medicine.  I have a little of both
in me, as I graduated from Medical school and did part of a residency in
Emergency Medicine (before quitting, not important here), and later worked
for a vet who specialized in cats, ferrets, and rabbits for a couple of
years (until recently).  ANYWAY, I've had some experience on both ends with
ketamine.  In the vet practice my vet didn't ever use ketamine on ferrets-
only on cats for neuters and spays and other short surgeries.  Her reasoning
for using only iso (isoflurane) on ferrets (and she does a lot of ferret
surgeries) is that they tolerate it extremely well, it's very easy to get
them "down" (under anesthesia) (she uses a large bell mask to put the whole
front of their body into to first get them groggy and then quickly switches
to a very small ferret-sized mask to keep them under- we've never had a
problem with gas escaping and doctors or techs getting sleepy), and they
come out of it quickly.  When it's been a pretty big surgery and she knows
they'll be in a lot of discomfort afterward she'll give them an
intramuscular dose of torbutrol (a mild narcotic painkiller) while they're
still under to help them wake up slower.  I've never had a problem with my
own ferrets having various surgeries under iso, and I've had many!  Still-
I'm sure ketamine has good purposes for ferrets as well- it depends on the
comfort of the vet.  But I digress- I'm getting off the subject.
 
When I was still in people medicine we used ketamine sometimes, especially
in emergency medicine.  At the time (this was 3-4 years ago, so not sure how
they use it today- things in medicine change so quickly!).  It was kind of
big for use in kids for things like stitches and stuff.  Kind of zoned them
out.  For a while there was talk of manufacturing a ketamine sucker for kids
to suck on before they got their stitches in, but as far as I know they
never got that running because they couldn't control the dosage and such.
We occasionally used it in adults in the emergency room, too.  The only
example I can remember is a 30-ish woman who stepped on a darning needle and
stuck it through her foot.  The doctor in charge (I was a young resident who
didn't make such decisions yet) opted for ketamine for anesthesia.  We gave
it to her, and she just kind of dazed out.  As I pulled this big darning
needle out of her foot (which would have been incredibly painful) she was
sitting up in the bed just looking at me with a strange look.  Didn't flinch
at all.  Eyes really wide open (which later I saw in the cats under
ketamine).  After a while she came out of it and I asked her about what it
was like.  She said that she was pretty much aware of what was going on, but
it was like she was watching it from above.  She could remember that she
sort of felt the needle being pulled out, but that she didn't particularly
care about it at all- she was just watching it happen.  She felt it, but it
didn't feel like pain.
 
Anyway,  I don't know what this means to people who have had and who will
have ferrets anesthetized with ketamine, since I've never had to think
about it with one of my own pets.  So take what you will!  :)
 
Oh yeah- Dr Dan also mentioned (like I was going to) that ketamine is now a
big recreational drug called Special K (and I'm sure there are other names
out there).  I know that we had to keep our ketamine locked up in a drug
cabinet not too long after I started working there because ketamine started
being stolen from other vet's offices.  Bizarre.  Makes you worry about what
some people will do............
 
Love to all the fuzzies and people owned by them-
 
Jamie Furr
[Posted in FML issue 2365]